What does this imply just saddling the deficit in such rapid succession when the United States already is running on fumes due to bad policy and a absurdly expensive war?
Here's a laugh, just a couple of months ago the CBO was horrifying people that the bail out would cost $25B and they even claimed there was a 50% change that money would not be needed.
Not all the details have been released, so I will update this as new things come forth.
Bottom line, the government is going to offer American International Group (AIG) a bridge loan. The amount of the loan will be to the tune of $85 billion. In return, from what we know now, AIG will begin to sell assets ASAP to serve as collateral for the loan. Also, the company will grant the government Warrants.
American International Group Inc., the biggest U.S. insurer by assets, may get an $85 billion bridge loan from the Federal Reserve and cede an 80 percent stake, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed people briefed on the negotiations
Ok, now this is ridiculous. Can we get single payer health care here? Where is my bailout?
Why is it ok to nationalize private financial institutions yet when it comes to anything that's directly for the middle class, why ...oh my god...that's socialism.
(note the loan amount needed has gone exponentially up in 48 hours. I believe it started out at $20B).
Back in early July, I wrote a diary called Neutron Bomb over Wall Street in which I speculated that the ongoing old-fashioned "slow motion bust" was destroying Wall Street finance but leaving the Main Street economy largely intact. Shortly afterward, a few mainstream economists such as Prof. Brad de Long of Berkeley picked up on the same point.
After the bloodbath on Monday, a bloodbath that seems to be spreading almost by the hour to other banks and financial houses, it is worthwhile to revisit that idea: just how much of the financial system disaster is spreading into mainstream Main Street America?
The MSM reported the "seasonally adjusted" -.1% decline, but the non-seasonally adjusted number is -.4% and is much more interesting. It is the biggest non-seasonal decline since -.5% during the 2006 oil price correction. There is every reason to believe that next month a similar decline for this month will be reported (because Oil prices are still collapsing), driving YoY CPI down to ~4.5%. And that's before last year's big Nov. number of +.6% gets replaced.
"We expect a depression in the United States. We expect a depression, very possibly, also in Europe," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange."
The estimated $300 billion cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailout will probably be considered as a loss that the government will have to take, therefore passing it on to taxpayers, he explained.
"We already have $3 trillion of debt, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. These debt figures across the U.S. economy are rising very sharply."
(Editor's note: My sincerest apologies, I had planned to post this thing up this morning. But alas, my hard drive with the notes ended up saying it would mimic John McCain's economic plan, and collapse on me. Several hours later looking for a hard drive and attempting to reinstall Vista, I'm up and running. So this is an abbreviated version of what I had planned. Once again, sorry, rest assured I will make up for this. )
Right now, you probably have heard that Lehman Brothers is no more, and the Merrill Lynch is now a vassal of Bank of America. Well things on the manufacturing side ain't looking that great.
HP wields the axe once again and fires 24,600 employees and at least half, or 12,600 will come from the United States.
Ah, now we know HP lobbies heavily for guest worker Visas, claiming they just cannot find workers in the United States. Let's repeat, just in this latest round of workers to the chopping block, HP is firing 12,600.
News moves at lightening speed. One minute the story is Lehman Brothers going bankrupt, the next is Barclays is now going to buy some of it, in the asset fire sale in the bankruptcy court.
AIG is like watching a building implode, in slow motion. Bank of America is buying Merrill Lynch, yet no one is questioning any of this, including their purchase of another in trouble mortgage firm, CountryWide.
So, what specifically do these Presidential candidates plan to do about all of this? Right now, we have more finger pointing of the two campaigns with little details on actual policy plans or positions.
This is it. Forward month WTI has closed below $100, at $95.71. The Series is officially over.
When I began this series on May 29, Oil was over $130, having gone up 30% in only 4 months! It seemed everybody was convinced that we would have $150 Oil by July 4 and $200 Oil by the end of 2008. Here's what the Oil chart looked like on the very day that I said "The Countdown to $100 Oil is on":
News moves at lightening speed. One minute the story is Lehman Brothers going bankrupt, the next is Barclays is now going to buy some of it, in the asset fire sale in the bankruptcy court. 
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