What is it Really Going to Cost?

Everyone seems to forget that most of the safeguards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were rolled back 12 years ago so more people could get mortgages. Things like proof of employment and amount of income. Now we are paying the price for THAT decision. How is that Bush's fault?? People are spending more than they can afford. How many do you think paid for big screen TVs, new cars and credit card debt with home equity?

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses, and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.

When you have to borrow $700 billion dollars to save your ass..its only time.The clock is ticking!

Those CEO's, the administration, George, congress should return all the money they made at the taxpayers expense the past 8-10 years..crooks everyone of them..what happen to the fundalmentals of the economy are strong? form rags to riches and back in a blink of an eye?

I have to say that from all I have read... I am far from convinced that this is going to solve any issues at all. All this does it get the people responsible for it off the hook. Now they can go back out and write a bunch more bad loans and cause the same catastrophe... only problem is the second time around... all the money to save it is gone. There have been others who have said it already... but let it collapse. The people who have been doing the right things will weather the storm. Those who haven't will crumble and fall where they should be. It is becoming embarassing to call myself an American watching how these "powerful" people act. You read articles about the "bail out" in the news and they are talking about how they don't want to let McCain and Obama into the talks because they don't want to share the credit with anyone else. These are our elected officials... acting like a bunch of spoiled little kids. We've gotten exactly what we deserve.

It's not a RESCUE!!!! IT'S A BAILOUT!!!!!!

God help Congress if they let the CEOs walk away with a golden parachute.

It's not a rescue!!!! It's a BAILOUT!!!!

OK, two things.

FIRST, you said, "At the end of June, about 2.75 percent of home mortgages were in foreclosure, and an additional 6.4 percent were at least 30 days behind in their payments. The unemployment rate was 6.1 percent in August. If it rose to 7 percent or higher, defaults and delinquencies would climb. In my example, if only 25 percent of borrowers repaid their mortgages, the government would lose money."

How in the World do you go from 2.75% plus 6.1% and assumption of unemployment of 7% to a number that 75% will default on their mortgages?? That's ridiculously extreme and sounds like a scare tactic.

SECOND, what are the actual numbers of banks that will be declared "failed" on 30Sep when the quarterly books are closed? And, of them, how many accounts are FDIC insured and for how much? That should be a baseline for the simple/easy method to find out the minimum the Fed would be on the hook to cover on that alone. What is THAT number?

None of the people cooking this remedy can tell us that we are not postponing the inevitable failure of our economy. Why wait? The sooner it all manifests, the sooner that we can rebuild a better system and get the crooks who caused it out of our lives. A goodly number of them should be fitted for striped suits. The kind of suits when worn on the street reveal an escapee from a nearby prison.

I think these firms need to accept the failures. If they casused this mess - suffer. A bailout this big that gets government into the private banking sector is not a good plan at all.

What about cost overruns? How many government bids have you seen that didn't have a bunch of overruns? Especially when the bidder admits that he doesn't really know how much cost will be involved.

I want to own a piece of each company my tax money bails out. If im bailing them out, then i should have a fair stake in that companies stock or assets.

I want to own a piece of each company my tax money bails out. If im bailing them out, then i should have a fair stake in that companies stock or assets.

Just a thought. This bailout seems, once again, to be welfare for the wealthy... the institutions (and at least some of the individuals) that made the greatest blunders receive generous government assistance... the taxpayer is left holding the bag, with pie-in-the-sky suggestions that he MIGHT somehow make money on the deal, in the great bye-and-bye, and the little guys, the people losing their homes, are abandoned while we rescue the big bankers. If the securities the government is to be are already acknowledged to be worth less than face value, what about simply reducing the mortgages they represent by, say 10% across the board, up front (while they are still assets of the institutions that blew it), then negotiate a selling price on that basis. The lending institutions take a loss up front, but of known proportions that the markets can absorb and adapt to... the 10% reduction plus the discount at which the government buys the securitities... the burden and level of risk to the taxpayer is reduced by these same amounts, and with the benefit of a 10% reduction of their mortgage debt, fewer borrowers will be forced into foreclosure, more will be able to save their homes, and ultimate losses to the taxpayer holding the securities will be minimized. If we are determined to have the government step into this, must ALL the benefit, once again, accrue to the executive suites of the very insitutions that failed us so badly, while ALL the risk of a huge bailout is borne by ordinary Americans? Again?