Senate Gives Away the Rest of the TARP $350 Billion

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Senate gives away more money

There is no anything to give the money directly to homeowners. We have only Larry Summers claiming to ease foreclosures.

That means nothing. They can claim almost anything would help homeowners when in fact the money goes directly to banks where as it is we have no accountability.

more details

Republican Sen. Vitter:

There's been mistake after mistake, embarrassment after embarrassment, and a complete lack of accountability in the TARP program," said Vitter. "The American people are not going to be fooled twice ... I urge all of my colleagues not to be fooled again, to say no to an open checkbook.

The vote was 52 to 42 so ...so much for our new Democratic Senate.

I will update this post with the actual vote as soon as it is available.

TPM Cafe has some of the votes:

Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (WI), Maria Cantwell (WA), Byron Dorgan (ND) and Ron Wyden (OR), in addition to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), stuck to the same anti-bailout stances they took in October.

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Mary Landrieu (LA), both of whom voted against giving Bush the first half of the financial rescue money, decided to give Obama the money this time. McCaskill had been particularly skeptical of Bailout Part Deux earlier this week.

Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) switched from affirmative votes under Bush to disapproval of the bailout under Obama. Flexing their rebellious muscles as centrists, perhaps?

Among Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins voted against the new cash while Olympia Snowe sided with Obama -- a rare moment of difference for the Maine moderates. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), reversing his always-awkward campaign-trail support for the bailout, voted to disapprove it today. And Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), on his way to retirement, bucked today's party line to okay the cash for Obama. (As Ben Smith notes, this is only the beginning of the campaign to bring Voinovich on board Obama's economic plan.)

Finally, the vote. Did your Senator promise in the campaign to not support the TARP? Did they follow through?

Jeff Merkley campaigned against the Bail out and look how he voted!

Grouped By Vote Position
YEAs ---42
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sanders (I-VT)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Shelby (R-AL)
Specter (R-PA)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Wyden (D-OR)
NAYs ---52
Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Schumer (D-NY)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Present - 2
Hatch (R-UT)
Tester (D-MT)

Not Voting - 3
Brown (D-OH)
Bunning (R-KY)
Kennedy (D-MA)

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I agree with you for the most part....

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....the one thing I think we can hope for is that (and quoting what I heard from others) "Obama will do it better". For better or for worse it's all on him now. He promises that he will have accountibility, etc. (it remains to be seen, of course), so I guess we'll see.

 

 

 

 

 

"....under Capitalism, man oppresses man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..." ---John Kenneth Galbraith

"....under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..."

---John Kenneth Galbraith

Here's the quote from Obama:

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Restoring the economy requires that we maintain the flow of credit to families and businesses.   So I'm gratified that a majority of the U.S. Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, voted today to give me the authority to implement the rest of the financial rescue plan in a new and responsible way.  I know this wasn't an easy vote because of the frustration so many of us share about how the first half of this plan was implemented.   There was too little transparency and accountability, and it didn't do enough to get credit where it's needed most -- small businesses and families struggling to keep their jobs and make ends meet.   Now my pledge is to change the way this plan is implemented and keep faith with the American tax payer by placing strict conditions on CEO pay and providing more loans to small businesses, more transparency so that taxpayers can see where their money is spent, and more sensible regulations that will protect consumers, investors, and businesses," said President-elect Obama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"....under Capitalism, man oppresses man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..." ---John Kenneth Galbraith

"....under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..."

---John Kenneth Galbraith

Lame, sorry

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it's an absurd amount of money and basically not needed. The fundamental concept is flawed here. And vague promises are not reassuring at all. He has Paulson's Neel Kashkari in place to manage the TARP, same guy.

I am thoroughly disgusted. "limiting CEO pay"???? Come on, that isn't even 1/10th of what is wrong with this. The real bottom line is one doesn't need $750 Billion of US taxpayer money to fix this problem. It's not even the right approach. Only when they stop the foreclosures will things stabilize and this is the #1 thing both parties are playing platitudes but not really doing anything about. They refuse to give money to the people, that's bottom up, or Keynesian economics and they are giving it to the very corporations, groups, systems which are broken instead.

It's an incredible amount of money. I remember when people were writing books, Americans were shocked at the cost of Iraq, esp. then at $1 trillion dollars and now they are dropping trillions like it is a paper confetti.

I did an overview of the latest CBO report and it's quite possible the United States plain goes bankrupt. So to hand over another $350 billion which is not proved at all to help or even be needed is absurd.

Did you see Yves Smith on Martin Wolf yesterday?

Completely demolishes Obama's plan. Wolf Versus Pettis on US Stimulus, Fiscal Deficit (Not for the Fainthearted)

First, there must be a credible programme for what Americans call “deleveraging”. The US cannot afford years of painful debt reduction in the private sector – a process that has still barely begun. The alternative is forced writedowns of bad assets in the financial sector and either more fiscal recapitalisation or debt-for-equity swaps. It also means the mass bankruptcy of insolvent households and forced writedowns of mortgages.

All this would also lead to big one-off increases in public debt. But those increases would probably be much smaller than those generated by a decade of huge fiscal deficits. The aim is to have a slimmer and better-capitalised financial system and a healthier non-financial private-sector balance sheet, sooner rather than later. The troubled asset relief programme should be used for these purposes. It will need to be bigger.

Second and most important, the structural current account deficit has to diminish. The US private sector is no longer in a position to run huge financial deficits as an offset to the demand-draining external deficits. The public sector can do so only for a few years. In the long run, the world economy must be sustainably and healthily rebalanced. This is a huge challenge for international economic diplomacy. It is also an essential element of sound domestic policy. . . .

Smith really sums it up well:

The US has not been willing to inflict pain on lenders and investors, even though over-their-heads borrowers will go bust and deliver losses. But too many holders of the paper seem to derive false comfort from having the losses show up a tad later than they would anyhow.

And Stirling Newberry sums it up this way:

With Bernanke talking again about having the Fed sponge up toxic waste, and needing a Federal fund to do that, and Obama issuing his first veto threat over the next round of TARP money, it seems likely that we are going to do things wrong one more time.

 

there were so many alternatives

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that wouldn't have cost anywhere near this amount. I believe I read the U.S. could buy outright every distressed mortgage in the United States and pay only $200 Billion.

thanks for the quotes, at least I'm not alone because I am really outraged, probably even more outraged because we know Bush is full of it but to get "more of the same" when I know the entire nation believed they were getting something else...
is frustrating. I wonder if team Obama is going to suffer the worse backlash in hell if they continue down the legislative and policy path they seem to be heading.

I agree almost 100% with what you say....

Submitted by on

...I guess my point is that I was holding out some hope that Obama might do some good especially given the fact that it's all on him. But yes, you are absolutely correct that this plan doesn't really help those that really need it and further empowers those that caused this mess in the first place. 

 

 

"....under Capitalism, man oppresses man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..." ---John Kenneth Galbraith

 

"....under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism it's just the opposite..."

---John Kenneth Galbraith

I think many, many people are

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and we are ? 4 days away from even being sworn in?

I never was an Obamanut during the campaign and I normally volunteer for campaigns and this year sat it all out because I just couldn't find someone who needed help who I believed in...

plus I'm a policy/stat/economics wonk but I fear there is going to be a terrible emotional crash for most of America if things progress down these few steps of the path.

I didn't think of that until today.

It's more than an emotional crash

I'm sorry, but it's going to be entertaining to watch the first couple of months of the Obama presidency.

Because, as we see with the banking situation currently what happened in the fall was merely a holding action that's not going to fix the underlying problem.

I remember hearing Lou Dobbs give the number of $200 billion for the value of the entire subprime mortgage market, but I can't find a link confirming that.

The bottom line though is that the problem isn't the underlying asset, the house loans themselves, it's the system of financial transactions built on top of this. The bundling of these loans so that they could be securitized, and the sale of credit default swaps (CDS) agreements that guaranteed them. We've been told repeatedly that many of these CDS cover the same underlying asset, so that the collapse of a bundle of loans valued at $20 million, may generate a ripple in the CDS market causing $200 million or $2 billion dollars worth of damages.

We don't know what the banks did with the money that they were given, and every indication is that they have continued to pay up on the value of the these CDS agreements, which means that they have inflated the cost of the underlying crisis in housing prices by whatever factor the bankers have managed to create by insuring the same underlying asset multiple times.

It's really simple in the end, the crisis is only going to end is when the US government nationalizes the greater part of its banking system and dissolves the remainder of these agreements.

And Robert Rubin and the rest of the people who latched on to Barack Obama as the last, best hope of the Wall Street Democrats way back when he gave the keynote at the launch of the Hamilton Project, and gushed over the need to turn on populism in the Democratic party.

Now payup time, and the question is whether Barack Obama is going to be able to make the decision to nationalize the financial sector, or whether he's so married to the idea of bipartisanship and neo-liberal ideology that he just can't do it.

And if that happens, then what do we get?

I think $200B

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was for every single distressed property. I saw this also but it was in a financial blog. We can simply get the values of the homes about to be foreclosed on and that should be available on at least the blogs tracking the housing bubble.

Well, I see the blogs are waking up and the pressure is starting to pour in.