Not me. Nor would I want to. They are not a good company to work for at my level.

I wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation either, especially considering the bailout was a loan that charged interest. I can't think of any good alternative though. The fact is, if only some banks took the loan, those banks that took the loan would be subject to extreme short pressure.

Interestingly, the google search you linked to does not contain a result for the market value of derivatives. Rather, it only contains a figure for the amount of cash that would have to be transferred if all derivative contracts were triggered simultaneously, a circumstance that is impossible. I wrote up a scenario, but the Company A, B, C, D, etc. just got too onerous. Anyone on /. should be able to do the math on their own. In a closed system, it's impossible for everyone to default at the same time.

Fucking HTML. That post was formatted nicely before I forgot to preview.

Allowing GM to default would have been extremely painful in Michigan; there's no doubt about that. The pain in Michigan would be offset in other parts of the country, and the net would ultimately be positive. But even with the bailout, things in Michigan are bad. The government should have let GM go through bankruptcy and funded make work programs in Michigan while GM got its house in order (And, likely, got absorbed by another auto manufacturer). Let the free market deal with corporations. When corporations fail, people lose jobs, and wealth is redistributed, naturally, to those who can best use it, namely other, more efficient corporations. In the mean time, the government should be using excess tax dollars (You know, from raising taxes when things are going well, to offset tax cuts in lean times) to fund welfare benefits for those who fall victim to the natural business cycle.

I would be shocked if less than 100% of overnight loans weren't paid back.

nzbmatrix is not free, but it is worth the money. I think I paid about $10? It may be cheaper now, since it's charged in GBP, and the GBP has fallen since I bought it. The $10 covers 10 years of usage (It was "forever" but their lawyers told them that was a stupid idea). You can't find everything on NZB Matrix, but what you can find is almost never spam. (I have never downloaded spam from NZB Matrix, but it's common on binsearch, which basically indexes everything). If you don't use SABnzbd+ as a client, I recommend you look into it. It's easy to install, easy to set up, and works great.

The risk appetite was so low that banks didn't want to lend anything. The rates they would have required would have been absurd. The market interest rate was one at which nobody would transact. It wasn't so much a subsidy as it was a poorly negotiated loan from a lender that was less concerned about risk and more concerned about the transaction occurring. The market interest rate was not rationally based on default risk, it was based on uncertainty about the market as a whole. The government was the only lender with enough capital (unlimited) to adequately diversify risk away.

I'm only speculating, so I'd wait for a response from him on what he was referring to. I would imagine though, that GM is what he was thinking of, but I defer to him to clarify. Even though the bailouts weren't really related, they happened at pretty much the same time.

The Fed ALWAYS extends short-term loans via the discount window. The Fed gave preferential rates because they had incentives that the private lenders did not -- to lower rates without regard for profit. This was a big story when it came out because everyone screamed "$7.7 trillion" when it was really more like $77 Billion in overnight loans, every night for 100 days (Not real numbers, but the math is the same. $ * days = $7.7 trillion, $7.7 trillion / days = average daily on-loan balance. At NO point did the government have $7.7 trillion at risk). These loans were to stimulate lending at the banks, lending is how banks make their money, so of course, the banks profited from this lending. It was a legitimate story, but the numbers were overblown for dramatic effect, something I would not expect from Bloomberg, and they took some heat for it.

That dastardly Obama and his accomplice, George W. Bush, who signed it into law in December of 2008 before Obama was in office. The union vote would have certainly gone to the Republicans had Obama not intervened!

The auto bailout was stupid, and although Bush had little to no choice, (Why veto a bailout that's going to get signed a month later, and cost more because of the wait?), the idea that it was to secure the union vote when signed into law AFTER Obama was elected but BEFORE he took office is absurd. The Democrats had the union vote already, and they'll have it this year, too. No action necessary. The Republicans don't even want the union vote. Yes, additional, larger bailouts were approved afterwards by Obama, but again, he already had their votes, and would still have them now even if he didn't bail out the automakers.

I wasn't aware of that, if it is true. Do you have a link to back that up? I'm not being an asshole, I'm genuinely curious. It may make sense, and be a part of the reason that pirated CDs for personal use are sometimes confiscated by customs (from luggage, obviously there's good reason to confiscate from parcels).

Jesus Christ that's expensive. I was going to recommend Astraweb, but it looks like you are probably using them already. You're doing yourself a disservice for not buying in bulk.

You're paying 40c per GB. 180GB at $25 is 13.4c per GB, and 1 TB at $50 is 5c per GB.

Also, I find Usenet to be terrible without binsearch.info, and amazing with nzbmatrix.

The only part that is speculation is that it's believed that JP Morgan didn't need the money. I'd say based on the current health of the company, it's a pretty safe bet. The fact that JP Morgan has paid back TARP money is beyond question.

He's probably referring to what's mentioned below. Last two paragraphs. GM paid back the cash portion of the bailout with the cash that was held in escrow. I think this piece is a little shaky, it appears they just gave the cash part of the loan back unspent. Regardless, it doesn't matter, since most of the true bailout was with a stock purchase. I am not a fan of the GM bailout. The idea that 1,000,000 automaker related jobs were at risk is absurd. If a GM dealership shuts down, they aren't going to sit, worthless for the foreseeable future; they are going to turn into Honda dealerships. This is the case with aftermarket parts manufacturers, domestic-only auto shops (a rarity these days), and other "automaker related jobs." The bailout was made for emotional, overly-nationalistic reasons. A large number of "foreign" cars aren't made in poorer countries like China and Mexico, they are made in poorer states like Mississippi and Alabama.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/23/general-motors-economy-bailout-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html