[Slingin Sammy 33]

I may be completely off on this, but it was explained to me by a guy who's heavily into the market and real estate this way: The loans that the banks have on their balance sheets have a value, because of the housing bubble and sub-prime lending frenzy loans that were valued at 100% of value are now valued between the banks at about 10% of value. The real value, all things considered should be about 50-70%. If the Fed comes in and buys up these loans at their current value of 10-20%, holds them until the market corrects and trends upward, then resells them at their "real" value of even 50-70% then the Fed (us taxpayers) should make money. Again, I don't know if this is correct or not.

The real problems I have with the bail-out are; the company officers with golden parachutes. I would like to see a very low cap on their buy-out packages. Give them a choice - accept the bail-out and cap or don't and expect to be Federally prosecuted for whatever charges the Feds can throw at them. The other problem is what saden brought up about accountability. It can't be with one person or office within the Fed. It must be some sort of independent/bi-partisan group providing the oversight. As much as I don't like gov't regulation, in this area it's desperately needed.