Fixing Markets? Sure...Bridges...Not so Much
Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 01:59:00 PM PDT
So the wild and crazy stock market was down almost 400 points yesterday. There has been "contagion" regarding the subprime credit problems. Things are getting pretty scary and some people who have been making over $10 million a year might be getting laid off. One poor soul already was laid off, Warren Spector formerly of Bear Stearns.
Spector, 49, had been widely tipped as next in line to take over as chief executive of Bear Sterns, one of the largest finance houses in the United States. According to Forbes he made $35m last year, with just $250,000 coming from his salary, a bonus of $16m and long-term incentive plan totaling $18.8m.
It is bad out there on Wall Street. People are dying learning that their high stakes gambling problems have consequences. Speaking of people dying, did you see that bridge that collapsed? People died. Apparently, in the united states, both our bridges and our "borrow borrow borrow large amounts of money to invest in high risk investment models" are structurally unsound.
So, we need to decide which of these problems we should fix. It's time for The Decider to do some Decisioning. Should we let more people die on faulty bridges or should we help out the high rollers on wall street who appear to be, as we used to say on the farm, "fucking idiots". If you don't believe me, look into a little thing called "stated income".
Have you heard the Decider on the idea of fixing the bridges. He doesn't like the idea of a gas tax one bit. Here are our friends at Forbes
As popular as Oberstar's proposal will be following Minneapolis catastrophe, the bridge repair fund will likely hit speed bumps when it comes time to figure out how to pay for it, particularly with higher gas taxes. President Bush has already said he opposes a tax increase to pay for bridge repairs.
Apparently, according to a group I think I belonged to in college so that I could get free beer and wings at ASCE happy hours (don't worry, i don't build bridges, we built models in one class and tested them and let's just say mine wasn't competitive when it came to load testing), anyway, according to them it would take almost $10 billion a year to fix the bridges and keep more people from dying. $10 billion!!
Across the country, more than 70,000 bridges are rated structurally deficient. The American Society of Civil Engineers says it would cost at least $9.4 billion a year, for 20 years, to repair them all.
If I recall correctly from the ASCE happy hours, those engineers don't fuck around when it comes to this stuff. Their estimates, unlike, say the Bush Adminstration's estimates on anything, are generally pretty accurate. They usually even add in a Factor of Safety to make sure they are covered. So, it would cost $10 billion right now to start taking care of our bridge problem (thank goodness we didn't build the Bridge to NoWhere because I'd be pissed if we were paying to repair that). Anyone else want to bet this won't be funded? I'm a bit cynical because I live in Albany, NY. Last year one of our suspended overpasses came apart, check out this photo. A few inches more and you would've been hearing about us on the news. Anyway, since we won't get our funding perhaps you should play the odds and move to Albany since its unlikely we will have another close call.
So, my point is what, you ask? Have you seen this press release? Last night the "fed" coughed up a bunch of money to help out all the high stakes gambling idiots on wall street. Or as they put it:
The Federal Reserve is providing liquidity to facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets.
Providing liquidity. Overnight. I wonder how much they were able to scratch together to help out the fuckwad bankers.
The Federal Reserve added $38 billion in temporary funds to the banking system through the purchase of securities including mortgage-backed debt to meet demand for cash amid a rout in bonds backed by home loans to riskier borrowers.
Well, as we used to say down on the farm, "you can fix a lot of fucking bridges for $38 billion".
Happy trails, everyone. As they say on Wall Street, "Drive low, sell high".
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