Little Englander (sour)

Front page, Daily Telegraph - business section. worth a read.
Basically Congress have approved, at a special week-end sitting, a further $800bn to help with the sub prime mortgage problem.

Isn't it nice, that in the good ole USA, these things are done in public.

The UK government is doing the same thing for the UK equivalent of the spm but it's all to be done in secret, the tax-payer will not be permitted to know which banks/mortgage lenders will be getting what and from whom, we just get to know that we will be picking up the tab.

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Little Englander (bigoted)

Ea of Dune

LE(s)> It was a bad mistake to do that and there is a vocal minority in Congress (I'm guessing led by Ron Paul) who realise that this will in the long run make things worst.

THE US gov has essentially either borrowed $800bn from banks, or printed $800 out of thin air at the Federal reserve. Either way they will be paying interest on it, as the US central bank prints and lends the money to the government with a rate of interest attached.

So the government has taken $800bn which will be paid back through US income tax (I believe not a single dime of the Income tax goes to paying for anything but national debt to the Fed reserve currently) and given it to the banks to stay a float.
The public in essence are lending the bank however much to get out of trouble and so in theory the institutions have been nationalised.
This means if they collapse then the public is left carrying the can.

When your country is some $10 trillion in debt this does not sound like a good idea to me.

Ea of dune

The Bear

It’s rampant devaluation of the US$ in everything but name.

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I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

Little Englander (sour)

Caxton has a lot to answer for.

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Little Englander (bigoted)