Federal Bail Out And Rail Profits

Yes... We taxpayers are asked to bail out our Nation's financial system .... but our rail system doesn't seem to have any problems at all ..... see the rail financial news below. But Orlando City Hall, Winter Haven City Hall, and our Tallahassee State House still seem to think the State's taxpayers need to pay extortion to CSX Railroad at the expense of many good statewide public services just to get a few public benefits for Orlando.... Read one Conservative Congressman's crystal clear perspective on the "financial bail out" below ..... then ask yourself if we will not have the same crystal clear historical record after the fact in just a few short years or even months .... as to just how bad for Florida's taxpayers the negotiations were between FDOT and CSX if the "deal" is allowed to stand as is? Now also ask yourself how railroads can have record earnings when the economy is so "depressed" for everyone else .... is it because it is the most fuel efficient mode of transportation we have and they have no real competition to keep freight rates down? Why does everything in the grocery store cost more now than it did just a few short weeks and months ago? So again .... why is it we need to give the rail industry corporate welfare .... when they don't seem to care about the public's welfare? 10/22/2008 NS sets five financial records, drops operating ratio below 70 for first time How’s this for quarterly financial results: Norfolk Southern Corp. set five records and posted a sub-70 operating ratio in the third quarter.Railway operating revenues increased 23 percent to a record $2.9 billion, income from operations jumped 31 percent to an all-time-high $894 million, net income soared 35 percent to a record $520 million, diluted earnings per share rose 41 percent to a record $1.37 and NS’ operating ratio improved 2 points to a best-ever 69.1.“It was an exceptional quarter for our company,” said NS Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Wick Moorman during the Class I’s earnings conference this morning. “It’s a confirmation of the strength of our diversified business portfolio and ability to offset volume declines in the housing-related and automotive sectors.”Although coal demand was strong and NS handled record coal tonnage, continued weakness in the automotive and housing-related industries contributed to a 1 percent year-over-year traffic volume decline to 1.9 million units. Automotive volume fell 30 percent to 86,639 units vs. third-quarter 2007’s total. General merchandise revenue increased 13 percent to $1.5 billion despite a 6 percent volume decline, coal revenue jumped 52 percent to $876 million as volume rose 6 percent and intermodal revenue increased 16 percent to $560 million against flat volumes. Revenue per unit jumped 24 percent to $1,527 compared with third-quarter 2007’s total.Revenue gains primarily can be attributed to rate increases and higher fuel surcharges, said Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Don Seale.Meanwhile, railway operating expenses jumped 20 percent to $2 billion compared with third-quarter 2007’s expenses. The main culprit: fuel costs, which soared 64 percent to $474 million as the average price per gallon shot up 65 percent.Skyrocketing fuel costs have been a “consistent theme in 2008,” said EVP-Finance and Chief Financial Officer James Squires.— Jeff Stagl LETTER FROM CONGRESSMAN GENE TAYLOR OF MISSISSIPPI 4TH TO CONSTITUENT October 16, 2008 Dear David: Thank you for expressing your opposition to the Bush Administration's request to allow the Secretary of the Treasury to spend $700 billion to bail out investment losses by Wall Street firms. I voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (the bailout bill) when it was defeated in the House by a vote of 205 to 228 on September 29. I voted against it again on October 3, but this time the House passed it by a vote of 263 to 171. The bill that passed Congress was badly flawed. It will expose taxpayers to hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and yet would do almost nothing to solve the underlying problems in the economy. The second bill actually was worse than the first bill. The only changes were to add $150 billion in special interest tax breaks, and increase FDIC insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 per account with no increase in the premiums paid by banks. The amount of federally-insured deposits will increase by $670 billion, from $4.46 trillion to $5.13 trillion. Our nation is facing a severe economic crisis caused primarily by the greed of Wall Street investment firms and the government's failure to protect taxpayers and the public from the excesses of financial speculators. Mortgage brokers, investment banks, and speculators created a housing boom that turned into a credit bubble and now has ended in a devastating bust that affects all sectors of the economy. On September 18, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met with Congressional leaders to request broad authority to purchase bad investments in order to get those losses off the books of Wall Street firms. Two days later, Secretary Paulson sent a 2½ page bill requesting absolute authority to spend up to $700 billion to buy bad mortgage-backed debt from investment firms and then eventually try to sell them. Over the next week, Congressional leaders negotiated some improvements to the plan. The agreement would require companies that dump their bad assets on the government to give the government warrants for company stock. If the companies recover and their stock prices rise, the government could sell the stock to repay some of the bailout cost. Congressional negotiators also got the Administration to agree that companies bailed out by taxpayers would have limits on the pay, bonuses, and 'golden parachutes' of their executives. The deal would set up an independent oversight board and a special inspector general to guard against fraud and corruption. Finally, the Treasury would get the $750 billion in three installments rather than all up front. I appreciate that the Congressional negotiators improved the Administration's proposal, but it is still a bad bill based on the same very bad idea. Secretary Paulson would still have up to $700 billion with broad discretion to decide what bad assets to buy, who to buy them from, how and when to sell them, and who to hire to handle all the transactions. This is very dangerous authority to give to any person or agency. There is enormous potential for insiders to game the system at taxpayer expense and for the process to expose taxpayers to many more liabilities. I do not know if the Secretary of the Treasury reads his own agency's financial reports, but the federal government does not have $700 billion. In order to buy $700 billion in bad investments, the Treasury would have to sell $700 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. The Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian and European banks and investors would take several hundred billion dollars out of their current investments and loan that money to the U.S. government. The net effect to U.S. taxpayers would be to substantially increase our debt and interest payments owed to foreign countries, institutions, and investors in order to gamble on bad Wall Street investments. The net effect to the global economy would be to take $700 billion that currently is in relatively good investments and launder that money through the Treasury into bad investments in order to take losses off the books of a few Wall Street firms. For the past three decades, Wall Street has lectured us about the efficiency of markets. They said it was good for the country when plants relocated to Mexico, or China, or Malaysia, or when loyal workers were forced to take early retirement or wage and benefit cuts. Now that Wall Street is facing the consequences of its own greed, we are told that big financial firms are too important to let the market determine their fates. Even if I could get past the fact that all the money would be borrowed, I have zero confidence that the Administration's scheme would improve the national economy. Buying up bad debts will not restore confidence to the financial system. Putting the burden on taxpayers will not eliminate the consequences of the past decade of unwise and excessive credit and investment practices. I am afraid that all of these bad investment losses will have to be absorbed, and I believe they should be absorbed primarily by the people who are responsible for them rather than by the taxpayers. The only way the government can restore confidence to the markets is to establish proper protections and oversight of financial transactions. The risky investment strategies were products of the unregulated or poorly regulated sectors of the financial industry. Federally regulated mortgages guaranteed by FHA and VA did not offer subprime loans and have not had significant default or foreclosure problems. Most depository institutions regulated by FDIC did not make or purchase subprime or other risky loans. That activity was driven by the unregulated investment firms and mortgage brokers. The Bush Administration, the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission refused to perform adequate oversight while investment banks infected the national economy with risky, complicated securities. The Republican-majority Congress helped to cause the problem by weakening federal regulation of financial markets. In 1999, Congress enacted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that had prohibited banks from engaging in securities investment and insurance. I voted against Gramm-Leach-Bliley and predicted at the time that it would put banks and depositors at risk. The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted in 1933 after investigations showed that some bank failures during the Great Depression had been caused by fraud in the securities and investment activities of the banks. Glass-Steagall enacted a common-sense separation of the core functions of a bank - account deposits and lending - from the risks of investment speculation. After Glass-Steagall was repealed, banks, insurance companies, and investment firms merged under large holding companies. The entrance of large banks into the investment market encouraged the unregulated investment firms to engage in riskier investments in order to attract investors with the possibility of higher returns. In 2000, the Republican Congress also snuck through legislation that prohibits regulation of derivatives, which are complex and risky transactions that bet on the future of other financial instruments. The 2000 financial deregulation package also included the 'Enron loophole,' which exempted Enron's energy trading from federal regulation. That provision was written by Enron lobbyists and was pushed by Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. The deregulation package was added to a large must-pass funding bill a few days before Christmas in 2000, with no separate vote allowed on the regulation exemptions. Over the past decade, the mortgage industry relaxed loan standards and made it very easy for people to buy homes. The increase in home purchases and a construction boom of larger new homes caused housing prices to rise rapidly. Many people who had affordable mortgages were enticed to refinance their homes or take second mortgages to spend the equity in their homes. Over three years, from 2001 through 2003, 45% of U.S. households with a first mortgage refinanced their homes. The mortgage industry was so confident in rising home values that they started issuing low-document loans without verifying the buyers' incomes, and subprime loans to people with poor credit histories and little income. The banks, mortgage brokers, and investors did not care if buyers borrowed more than they could pay because the homes themselves were still increasing in value. In fact, overextended home buyers created demand for new mortgages, either through refinancing or through sales to new buyers. The mortgage and investment industries invented new ways to make money from mortgages. Investment firms bought mortgages from banks and brokers, and then bundled them together into mortgage-backed securities (MBS). They sold the MBS to investors and used that money to buy more mortgages. Wall Street firms designed an elaborate scheme of interlocking financial products that they believed would insure their investments, so they did not have to hold reserves to cover potential losses. Investment banks that held mortgage-backed securities created collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to sell the cash flow from mortgage payments. The mortgages would be sliced into several 'tranches,' (French word for slice) with the top rated mortgages in the tranche that pays first but at a lower interest rate. Investors holding the lowest rated mortgages receive higher interest payments but have a much higher chance of default. Wall Street created another financial instrument to try to hedge against that risk of default. Credit default swaps (CDS) are contracts that work something like insurance. The owner of an investment could pay a premium to insure the risk of default. If the investment defaults, the seller of the CDS has to cover the loss. However, because credit default swaps are exempt from regulation, anyone can buy a CDS for anything if he can find a willing seller. There is no requirement that the purchaser of a CDS actually owns the financial instrument that he is insuring from default. As a result, investors could use CDS to 'insure' against the default of someone else's property. With so many ways to cash in on mortgages, Wall Street firms, investors, and mortgage brokers funded boiler room operations to push subprime mortgages, interest-only mortgages, and other risky loans. Some mortgage lenders engaged in fraud to inflate both the appraisal of homes and the incomes of the buyers. Many subprime lenders engaged in predatory lending practices, such as mortgages with low teaser rates and then large balloon payments. These mortgages forced borrowers to refinance, but they were charged prepayment penalties when they did so. Boiler room lenders increasingly included yield spread premiums (YSP) in subprime mortgages. A yield spread premium is essentially a kickback to the mortgage broker for selling a mortgage with a higher interest rate than the borrower could have received. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not cause the mortgage crisis, but they contributed to it and became victims of it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) owned by stockholders, but are chartered by the federal government to serve the mortgage finance industry. They buy mortgages from banks and other mortgage lenders so that those lenders have funds to make additional loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bundle the mortgages together into mortgage backed securities that they sell to investors so that the GSEs have funds to buy more mortgages. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not buy subprime loans directly from banks. The commercial banks and savings and loans that are regulated by the federal government also did not make subprime loans. The GSEs did make unwise investments in mortgage-backed securities issued by investment banks that included subprime mortgages. No government agency or policy required any lender to make subprime loans. The current financial difficulties of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are largely due to the fact that they are not diversified. They only invest in mortgages, so their fortunes are completely dependent on a healthy housing market. When housing sales stalled last year, new mortgages stopped coming in, and investors reduced their holdings of securities and stocks tied to housing loans. The Bank of China sold $4.6 billion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities in July and August. The loss of investment capital caused short-term cash flow problems. The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship and replaced their CEOs. The Treasury has agreed to purchase up to $100 billion of preferred stock from each of the GSEs in order to give Fannie and Freddie sufficient funds to buy new mortgages from lenders. The flaw that burst the housing and credit bubble was the simple fact that, over the long run, housing prices cannot keep rising much faster than incomes. In 2006 and 2007, housing prices stopped increasing. In some communities with struggling economies, housing prices fell dramatically. A few months later, the number of mortgage delinquencies and defaults grew because borrowers who got behind in their payments could no longer refinance or resell their homes. Over the past year, more and more low subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages have become delinquent. These mortgage defaults threaten the mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the collateralized debt obligations (CDO), and the credit default swaps (CDS) that were backed by those mortgages. There are so many of these MBS, CDOs, and CDS everywhere in the financial and investment system, that the uncertainty about their value has frozen the credit markets. The Bush Administration's proposal would purchase the worst of these investments in order to open up the traditional lending market. I strongly oppose the authority for the Treasury Secretary to purchase credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations that are based on mortgages. If the government buys mortgages, at least we get real estate collateral that could be sold to repay some funds to taxpayers. The derivative contracts, especially the credit default swaps, are not covered by whole mortgages or other assets that the government could expect to sell. Investment banks issue and sell securities to governments, corporations, and institutional investors. They also provide financial advice and services for their corporate clients, including help with mergers and acquisitions. Investment banks are different than commercial banks, which primarily handle deposits and make loans. Although the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act removed the wall between commercial banks and investment activities, banks that hold deposits that are insured by the federal government are required to maintain sufficient capital reserves. Investment banks are not regulated by FDIC. At the beginning of the year, Wall Street had five big investment banks: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. All five have been substantially changed because of their holdings of questionable mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. Bear Stearns was purchased by J.P. Morgan Chase after the Federal Reserve agreed to take $30 billion of Bears Stearns' bad investments. Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have decided to become regulated bank holding companies so they will be eligible to borrow funds from the Federal Reserve. The market has punished the big Wall Street investment banks for making bad business decisions. That is as it should be. I do not believe the taxpayers should absorb their losses or the losses of their investors. I am very bothered by the Treasury's action to bail out AIG, an enormous insurance company. The insurance subsidiaries of AIG are in good financial condition because they are required to maintain access to enough capital to cover their insurance liabilities. However, the parent holding company was heavily invested in mortgage-backed securities and overextended in risky credit default swaps. Investors lost confidence in the parent company and the stock price plummeted. Secretary Paulson decided that AIG was 'too big to fail,' and agreed to give AIG up to $85 billion in exchange for warrants to purchase 80% ownership of the company. This action is particularly infuriating to me because the Bush Administration sent a Treasury official to Congress last year to oppose my bill to allow the National Flood Insurance Program to offer wind and flood coverage in one policy to avoid disputes over the cause of damage. The Treasury official said that 'Federal government interference in the wind insurance market will displace private markets, promote riskier behavior, be unfair to taxpayers, and be economically costly.' Now, the same Department of Treasury of the same Administration has decided to bail out a big private insurance company, an action that certainly displaces private markets, promotes risky behavior, is unfair to taxpayers, and is economically costly. We now can conclude that the Administration's opposition to hurricane insurance reform was not based on any principle or conviction. They simply modify their positions to serve the interests of the insurance industry and Wall Street firms. Thank you again for sharing your views about this bill. If I may be of any further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to ask. Sincerely, GENE TAYLOR Member of Congress GT:jad