We are seeing values today in real estate as they were valued in 2004, at least where I am located. The problem is that the incomes did not keep up with the housing increases and people still bought them.

This is where I’m a little lost. Are we referring to homes that had hyperinflated values, like in California and Florida, or are you referring to ALL homes in the US? Not all states/ areas experienced this hyperinflation.

Wouldn’t contracts be null and void with a bail out? There is no way in hell that anyone should get millions in compensation for ruining a company and causing an economic collapse in the process. I couldn’t care less if they were thrown out onto the street without any compensation…..

it’s like the only ones who are really complaining about the short selling freeze are hedge funds. i wonder why.

LAL, that’s my point exactly. You cannot have it both ways. If you blame the republicans or bush, then you are saying the dems are immune, which is absolutely not true. as you said, the republicans did not have enough seats to quash a veto anyways, as the dems have not. to make things clear for you, in 2005, the republicans wanted to regulate freddie and fannie effectively. all republicans in the senate banking committee voted for it, all democrats in the committee voted against it.

who cares what you call it, the govt has been bailing out for a long time. this isn’t the first time. america has never been a pure -ism in any shape or form, so what is the use in trying to define it into a pure -ism? there isn’t any. it only conjures stupid political fears. americans are bastards and they bastardize all systems. people on both sides of the fence are using -isms as catch phrases to scare or whatever. it makes absolutely no sense when you look at our systems.

the govt stands to make out huge on the $700b. come on $85b for $5trillion in mortgages alone just for freddie and fannie. they could sell at 1/3 the $5trillion and have made more than enough to cover all the bailouts combined. that doesn’t even touch the other assets.

that is the true problem with valuating anything, it is a guess. the govt needs to put some value, because there wasn’t an accurate value assessed in the first place. the prices have to be reasonable, otherwise, if you sell at fire sale prices, you will cause all house values to plummet to the fire sale price. i’m sure you wouldn’t want your house now to be worth 1/3 because you want the bailout to buy the subprime mortgages for 1/3 their original value. that would be disasterous. the one thing that needs to be verified is that the govt isn’t going to buy the houses at the original prices. i personally think prices should be set at value prior to 2004 is a fair value, because that is the time period where subprime and al-a loans and securities began to grow.

unfortunately, there was no call for $300b oversight, because it was for the homeowner and the homeowner is just an innocent victim in all this mess. how retarded.

I guess my biggest concern is that we’re giving all of these bailouts and we really have no guarantee that things are going to change or improve. It is a risk.

And we’re bailing out companies with money that we DO NOT have. People don’t seem to be too concerned about this.