Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 01:09 PM) I'd say we'd already done a lot of that with the few thousand entities bailed out by the Federal Reserve. i'd love to see the "government loss" column on that page.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:52 AM) My wife left grad school with about 40k total student loan debt from undergrad and grad. The loans then became active, and had an interest rate of like 3.5%. After 3 years paying on time, it dropped to 1.75%, and that's what its at now. Its basically free money on an inflation-based model. I would never want to pay that off early, unless I had no other debts to pay off (I wish). The payments are over, I think, 20 years. Really low payments. What sort of interest are you folks paying on student loans? We went to school when all the rates started to rise unfortunately. Our undergrad (fortunately, or unfortunately, the smallest amount of debt) is at 2.75%. My law school is in two chunks - 4.75 and 6.75, and her grad loans are at 6.75. Obviously we brought this upon ourselves, as no one was forcing us to go to school. But still.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:13 AM) Student Loan debt is 850B and growing. It actually exceeds credit card debt in this country. And from 10 years ago, the average student loan debt in this country has increased by ~54%. Pretty insane given how much more we are actually spending as a country. It is actually quite mindboggling to me that debt has increased that much and tuition costs have increased as much as they have as well (and that isn't a coincidence, imo), all in a short 10 year span. Makes you wonder what the f*** we spend our money on, given gov spending has done nothing but go through the roof. I just read something on wikipedia about federal student loans, and part of it was some study about how much school debt people should be paying in terms of percentage of their income per month. The max recommended was 8%. I laughed. My wife and I spend about 25%. And unless we want to pay back the loans for 30 years (and spend an extra 60-70k+ in interest to the government), we're stuck at that until our incomes go up. Just another reason if you're middle class in this country you are f***ed.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:42 AM) Except that Chrysler would have closed its doors completely and had its assets sold off by a bankruptcy court with everyone in the auto industry out of work. It's pretty darn clear both at the time and in hindsight that Chapter 13 was the only route that any of them would have gone. No one was paying to keep a bankrupt auto manufacturer running, especially considering that sales would have essentially ceased for years. No. That's step 25 in bankruptcy. Do you know what the process is and what benefits GM would have gotten through real bankruptcy proceedings? GM would have continued to operate without having to pay any of its debts for a period of time. During that time they would have either worked out new (more profitable) deals with their creditors or they would have put the company (or pieces of the company) up for sale. IIRC, GM was incredibly profitable in other markets like China. They could have used that as part of their reorganization. Instead, they got free money from the gov't so that America could continue to have an "American Auto Industry," which is a bulls***, unrealistic notion anyway given how much all of the auto makers are global now. Maybe the disconnect here is that you think i'm saying that the entities "GM" or "Chrysler" would have survived. Maybe not. But the people employed by them, and the massive amounts of assets located here in the states still held value and other companies would have purchased them, especially if they were offered a discount through bankruptcy negotiations. A company like Fiat is not going to send tens of thousands of italians over here to work in the plants. They're going to keep those assets here. I would have let the companies fall, job losses or not. People lost their jobs all over the country, but two select industries got bailouts. It was bulls***. We just created the notion that some businesses are too big to fail and therefore they can continue to f*** up and operate their businesses negligently and the USoA will save them.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:33 AM) and bankers overwhelmingly vote R. Who cares. Just pointing out that there was a political motivation there.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:27 AM) I think it's pretty clear that if Fiat wanted Chrysler, they had a period of months/years where the company was teetering and they didn't get it done. The only reason Fiat took on the lump that was Chrysler was that they got favorable terms. Otherwise, yes, the company was gone. And even non-bailed-out Ford still said that once one fell, all of them fell. They were buying a huge stake in the company (now 70% because of the options it got) regardless of whether the US government propped them up for a matter of months. Chrysler would have gone to bankruptcy and tried to find a buyer. Kinda like what happened anyway.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:16 AM) $14 billion to keep a few hundred thousand people employed for a period of 2+ years is a relative bargain...and it becomes even better if you count all of the auto parts suppliers. You don't think there would have been a buyer out there (you know, like Fiat)? You don't think an actual bankruptcy, without the promise that the US government would step in, would have been MORE beneficial to GM during it's reorganization? "Dear X creditor, either you amend our deal or we go bankrupt and you get zero." is a better negotiating position than "dear X creditor, we're going through bankruptcy, but we have the US gov't telling everyone there's absolutely no way we'll go out of business. So, uh...care to change our deal?" I'm guessing they got some REAL favorable terms as part of their restructuring using that line. Edit: And i'm not disputing there would have been SOME job losses as a result of not bailing them out. Hell, there were losses WITH the bailout. But what makes the auto industry worker so much more important than anyone else that lost their job as a result of their company going out of business the last few years? Oh right, auto workers overwhelmingly vote D.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:05 AM) That'd be a very reasonable and effective method of stimulus that I'd strongly support right now. Targeted to the perfect group; people who are likely to spend the money. It'd be fairly small unfortunately, because the total outstanding amount of student loans are $556 billion, which means that even a full year delay only gets ~$10s of billions of stimulus dollars in that year. It'd be in the right direction, but it's still less in value than increasing unemployment benefits would be. Keeping GM and Chrysler afloat has been an incredibly effective method of stimulus as well. I'd much rather give millions of people an extra few hundred (or more in many cases) bucks a month for a year than giving a s***ty, failing company 14 billion to give to their executives. And keeping GM and Chrysler afloat. GMAFB. Fiat kept Chrysler afloat, not the government.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:03 AM) What would stopping those payments do to the deficit, and how much more would we have to cut social services to finance it? Yeah I was trying to look that up to see how much the gov't collects. It can't be THAT much though, considering their loan practices (being extremely lenient on payment). Plus, they make their money over the 10, 20, or 30 year life of the loan. The loss from one year could be spread out.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 09:46 AM) I propose a national debt forgiveness day for completely greedy reasons as to get out from under this upside down mortgage. Note to past Steve, buying that house in 2007 was a bad idea. Value go bye-bye. I've advocated a one year freeze on obligations to pay back student loan debt held by the federal gov't. Think of all that extra capital that people would have to spend. Spending=better business performance=job hiring=economy back on track. Instead, we'll waste billions on GM to save "300 million" jobs.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Jun 2, 2011 -> 09:50 PM) He reached in and hit LeBron on the arm and then ran into him. That is a foul and it is ridiculous to say otherwise. Pretty sure both guys were going for the ball, but whatever

Whelp, dunno why I tuned in. Turning this nonsense off now

It's the finals man. If dirk hit him with the body, lebron hit dirk with the elbow. Gmab

Horses*** call on dirk, horses*** tech on Carlisle

Bailout call on wade there

That was a good no call. Wade caught the ball too far towards the baseline

Yeah that was the first 10 seconds of the finals I've watched. Pretty telling

Christ, that basket interference wasn't even close and they still refused to call it.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jun 2, 2011 -> 10:50 AM) My memory and attention span were offended when they would play about 10 mins of it, go to commercials, and repeat the last 5 minutes before they moved on. Welcome to the History Channel. I had the same issue with their pretty poor America: The Story of Us.

QUOTE (lord chas @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 10:20 PM) anyone check out franklin & bash? seems promising It's not getting very good reviews: http://www.avclub.com/articles/franklin-ba...ion_tv_calendar

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 2, 2011 -> 12:50 AM) So I finally found the time to play GTA IV recently and I beat it today. Now the game feels completely useless. Is Episodes from Liberty City worth getting? It's just more of the same with new characters. If you're not burned out yet and you enjoyed GTA IV, it's probably worth it. On a similar note, anyone else get LA Noire? I'm probably half way through (4-5 cases into the homicide desk) and i'm already burned out. I've reached the proverbial Mexico in RDR. Typical Rockstar game for me.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 07:15 PM) Which tells you how available bridge financing was. Available? They didn't have the time to check to see what was available. It was "omg the entire country will collapse if we don't save this company" in a matter of weeks.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 04:15 PM) They did go into bankruptcy, get reorganized, and resume working. They had the gov't push them through a focused bankruptcy. Negotiations with creditors was essentially "rigged" since GM had the federal government as their surety.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 05:00 PM) lol, who was stupid enough to pay Bibby that kind of money?I never knew he got that kind of bank, makes sense now, lol Bibby was a stud on those good Sacramento teams w/ Weber. If not for the NBA-fix, he'd have one ring already.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 04:01 PM) Also, the argument goes that the US economy got plenty of benefit by not losing another 1M jobs in late 2008/early 2009. They also placed some tight controls on executive bonuses and pay at the companies, so unlike the bank bailouts, it's not like it was used to finance billions in bonuses for the people that f***ed it all up to begin with. Yet, but it will. They have 14 billion in extra cash they didn't have at the start of this. What, you think they're going to lower the cost of the vehicles as a thank you to their customers? Even if they wait 2-3 years before bumping up their executive pay, that's absolutely what that money will go towards.