I also expensed the lounge tab. do ya mind?

couple trillion here… couple trillion there… u make it sound like a big deal… its all smoke and mirrors anyway, its not like the money actually exists. Sheesh!

But then you realize that they are the party that created the GSE’s in the first place, and have stuck up for them every step of the way.

A $10 trillion bailout seems a little high. Emphasis on “a little”. My hunch is that overall, real estate values nationwide (on average) will drop 20-35% from their 2006 highs. Even with a 40% drop, some people still have equity in their homes (some are free & clear). So a drop in real estate values of, say, $7 trillion would result in mortgage losses of something less than that figure – perhaps $4-5 trillion. After it all shakes out, I would guess that most of that loss will be incurred by private investment holdings (IRA’s, etc.). So any official bailout will be less than that. To some degree, the bailout will be acomplished by the government taking much more risk on FHA loans (probably soon to go to $417,000 with only 1.5% downpayments).

Of course, the crash in home values will impact most all other industries too, dragging the economy down big-time.

Best investment: companies making generic macaroni & cheese.

I worked for Comsat in the early 80’s, we had a tough year so Comsat decicded to cut the long tradition of an employee bonus of a Christmas Turkey (value $25) for the 3000 employees at the time. The CEO and President were coming out to visit us when the wall street journal reported that of the top 10 CEO bonuses of the year, two had gone to Comsat, a princely $1.6M. So they save $75K on the back of every employee while awarding themselves $1.6M.

Sounds like the same thing at FRE. And you wonder why otherwise logical people want to vote democratic (socialist).