More idiotic conservative posts like this and I'm removing the daily beast bookmark I have. Seriously. It's bad enough you have the incredible buffoon that is Tucker Carlson, now you have this moron? Who do you think your audience is? Rural evangalists from Kentucky? Ugh.

Reckless Agenda ???

If I was President , the markets could sell off till the DOW drops to ZERO for all I care ...

Then again I have no money invested in the markets so I guess I do NOT feel their pain ...

One thing I've learned from the whole investing experience and watching Wall Street is that after listening to all the educated economists and Wall Street types like Charlie, none of them are any more capable of forcasting what will happen than I am or you, for that matter...Somehow my husband and I have known all along that the market would not be there when it was time for us to make use of it....ONe thing we were told truthfully back in our college days (1969-70) was that the world would be influenced by events beyond the control of leadership ie. over population, stress on our resources and so forth.... WE were told for decades that the boomer generation would be a strain on our economy and government resources..WE watched for 3 decades as various Presidents tried to get the variuos Congresses to FIX Social Security and never did...Frankly, I think diversity is the ruination of the country, not because various cultures aren't interesting or viable but because they bring so many different mindsets about any given problem that a trim, focused, targeted solution to any problem has become all but impossible...I begin to see why competent Monarchies may be more advantageous than I might have ever thought.

The only reckless part of the strategy so far is that it doesn't go far ENOUGH, and it's too timid with regard to ovehauling the financial system.

Working in finance (compliance, though, so at least I can sleep soundly at night), I'm well aware of how horrid it sounds to let people modify the contracts underlying, say, mortage-based derivatives.

But this is a case where what is individually rational is collectively IRRATIONAL. And those are the times when you need government to step in. If you force things to the point of foreclosure -- regardless of whether it's deserved or not -- it drags down the value of all other properties, leading to a greater likelyhood of further defaults.

The Obama plan, should it work, will result in losses -- those assets won't be worth what we'd said they were. BUT, at least it will stanch the bleeding. Getting 50% of the value of an asset and saving the good tranches from getting burned is a hell of a lot better than getting 10% at auction, wrecking someone's credit, and having no idea when the defaults will stop!

I want to make sure I understand. If a judge, while evaluating a family's entire financial picture, decides to adjust a loan that is "abrogating contracts" and a curse upon the land?
If everyone, including members of Congress, call for Auto companies to raid pensions and yank away negotiated benefits that is responding to the market crisis?
We can consider purchasing "toxic assests" to protect bankers and traders, but we can't lower mortage values to keep families in homes?
Is this really what it has come down to?

If value is more mental than physical, then part of the solution to our economic crisis is mental as well. If we have hope, if we believe things are getting better, if we feel that the dollars have value, and that that value is going to increase, then we feel OK, and if we feel OK, and if we all feel confident, then at least part of the economic crisis is healed. We have jobs because business feels that there will be and there are demands for goods and they need employees to make those goods. Once the employees have jobs, well, they have needs, and so the belief that demands will grow turns out to be true because now people have jobs and pay checks and they act on their needs and wants by buying stuff (taken from a blog, simple but true).

It's arguable that McCain would have engendered greater confidence on the herd mentality of Wall Street, and certainly arguable that conservatives are FAR MORE willing to be viciously reckless in tearing down confidence in the opposing party AT ANY AND ALL COSTS rather than cooperatively working improve this situation constructively. But this doesn't mean that it would have been best to let McCain run the show. We need some major restructuring, and we've needed it for some time. Our educational system is not where it needs to be and where it can be. Profiteers to not have national interests at heart. They have profits at heart. The rest of us have to live here and earn a living. Trickle down has severe limitations and does not create the flexible nimble and intelligent society we need. Those who are having misgivings about Obama now should reserve judgment; they may be seeing only the short term pain necessary to improve the situation in the longview. That longview is important folks. I hope the Democrats and others, including Republicans, can fight back just as hard against those who want to create a self fulfilling destructive scenario just because they weren't at the wheel (in power). Rush Limbaugh is the head of the conservative party right now. That speaks VOLUMES. That guy is not an intelligent thinker, he's just a charismatic egotistical hate monger. He may be a nice guy, a fun guy to hang around with, but he's not someone I want shaping my future. He's a fame addicted former drug addict meglomaniac. Bernie Madoff should be a cautionary tale to us all. We need some nationalistic pride that is based on the good values of our country. I trust Obama more than "my fellow prisoners" McCain to steer us to a brighter future. Nothing again McCain as a person although I think he has participated shamefully in the hard right's efforts to undermine Obama for their own gain. It seem McCain, too, liked the limelight more than his country. He used to be a different man before this last election and his choice of Sara Palin as a running mate (the VP, seriously?)

WE need to let everything do what it will?? I hear that the greatest amount of health care money, for instance, is spent on people in the last few weeks of their lives.and yet the inevitable is to happen..The same is true of AIG, GM, CITI and on and on. Are we to ruin the possibilities of the next generations because we are unwilling to accept failure...OUr people will survive....Nobody said life exists without pain...Where is the courage of this generation of people?...During the last depression, all of my mother's brothers and sisters and their famiies moved in together. Yes, there was hardship, but I don't believe they expected as people seem to today that future generations should take care of them..or that homes were going to be handed out to them...What's wrong with renting a home? When did having a home become an entitlement?? I do blame the federal government and its race to embrace globalization on much of this emphasis on housing? Obviously if you give away all of your manufacturing base to other nations, then the only market for any goods made here is for things that go into the making of a home.

Since when is the Dow a good measure of economic health? It's a measure of the mood of the market and right now they're coming down off of a 20 year bender.

The homeowners shouldn't have bought the houses at bubble-inflated prices and the investors shouldn't have made the loans. Foreclosures wipe off 70 % of the home's value. If bankruptcy judges knock 30% off the principle to get the property down to market rate, they will ultimately save both sides money. Right now there is only a moral incentive for underwater homeowners to keep paying their mortgages.If the homeowner were rational, they would dump the house and give it back to the investors.

It's going to hurt a lot worse before it gets better. I'd prefer not to hear Wall St. bellyache about it.

I'm with btipling -- one more post from this moron and I'm outta here.

I'm sorry, I'm British - who is this dips**t? Judging by his elision of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (an index of 30 stocks), the economy and the popularity of a President - one who inherited a multi-trillion dollar debt position - I'm assuming he's some kind of amateur hack. Is that right? Is he a know-nothing hack?

Coz, you know, if he *wasn't* a know-nothing hack, he might surmise that no policy decision could outweigh fundamental weaknesses in the economy as a driver of the Dow over the short term, no matter what his Wall St buddies thought. He might understand that equities remained horribly overvalued despite last year's sell-off. And if he wanted to evaluate the stimulus package or the financial bail-out, he might pick a yardstick other than a narrow index of company shares.

Just saying.

Mr.Gasparino, I don't think you have to worry about the judge deciding on the financial ability of the mortgage holder to pay, or how much to pay, you have to worry about the judge saying, "Where's the note?" It seems the banks did not keep very good records and the notes are hard to find. If the bank does not have the note, if they cannot prove ownership, they cannot (as I understand it anyway) get the house back.

I'm not the smartest guy in the room here and won't pretend to have all of the answers, but, PHEW- was I glad to see 5 other people essentially call this guy a moron.

I used to be a Republican/Conservative. In fact, I am still registered as one, but it is this kind of narrowed vision of the world that has turned me away.

I wonder what solution Mr. Gasparino proposes to fix the problem? Just like Rush, he doesn't seem to have the courage to be constructive- just complain.

Only one thing I know for sure, I believe in Barack Obama and I am behind my president!

I would hardly call government ownership of 40% of Citi nationalization. It's more like the parent's taking the car away for a while because the teenager drove drunk.

Mr. Gasparino, I am Main Street. I have worked in construction for 10 years and, seeing this credit crisis coming for the past 6-7 years as evidenced by abundant credit card offers and kinky mortgages, I got completely out of debt, invested into energy (renewable) and money markets and trained learned a new skillset that I knew would serve me well in the event of a bad recession. I didn't get the new car or HDTV when the Jones' did. I was responsible and guess what- I will still gladly give half of my money to the government for a few years (just as I gave 4 years of my life to the US Marine Corps) to help keep this great country that has given so much to me from going under. Do you and your Wall Street pals have any concept of that- of believing in something larger than yourselves?

Good luck to you and your Wall Street Pals over the next few years. You'll need it.

PS- Please don't refer to Wall Street as the new Main Street again. It embarasses those of us who actually live on Main Street.

OK- done ranting now ;).

Gasparino ... the talking head genius of CNBC. Give me a break. The Daily Beast just continues to sink lower and lower by letting clowns like Gasparino publish this rubbish. The USA is going through a period of historic restructuring at both the macro and micro levels. Of course the markets don't know what the F to make of the situation. And that lack of confidence is leading down. What is Gasparino's alternative? Let all distressed homeowners fail and declare bankruptcy? If that's what he's calling for then we all better be prepared for the potential of a complete breakdown of society. I'd rather have an attempt made to help mitigate that risk with some type of organized loan restructuring process. The Gasparino's and the Santelli's offer nothing to the national conversation.

Gasparino is not only part of the right-wing CNBC/WallStJournal cabal, he's among the worst of them. You should have heard him hooting it up with Larry Kudlow at the top of the bubble, braying how good times were ahead and telling CNBC viewers to buy buy buy. Now that the bubbles have disasterously disintegrated, he and his cronies can't wait to assign blame. As long as the finger points away, right Charlie, instead of the blowhard in your mirror.

I'm not even going to go into the specific issues I have with this article, but the overarching one is the fact that although you attack all things Obama, you offer ZERO ideas of you're own. There seems to be a lot of monday morning economists that deride this or that but can't come up with a politically feasible solution of their own.