Year: 2008 (Page 5 of 14)

What is Bailout ?
A situation in which a business, individual or government offers money to a failing business in order to prevent the consequences that arise from a business’s downfall. Bailouts can take the form of loans, bonds, stocks or cash. They may or may not require reimbursement.

Investopedia Says:
Bailouts have traditionally occurred in industries or businesses that may be perceived no longer being viable, or are just sustaining huge losses. Typically, these companies employ a large number of people, leading some people to believe that the economy would be unable sustain such a huge jump in unemployment if the business folded.

Following is the trail of BAILOUT(S) happening ever n than in US.

1932 — The Hoover administration creates the Reconstruction Finance Corp. to facilitate economic activity by lending money in the Great Depression.

1933 — The Roosevelt administration creates the Home Owners’ Loan Corp. to buy $3 billion in bad mortgages from banks and refinance them to homeowners to stem a rise in foreclosures. The government makes a small profit.

1971 — Congress saves Lockheed Aircraft Corp., the nation’s biggest defense contractor, from bankruptcy by guaranteeing the repayment of $250 million in bank loans.

1979 — Congress and the Carter administration arrange for $1.2 billion in subsidized loans to bail out automaker Chrysler Corp., then the nation’s 10th-largest company. There ultimately was no significant cost to the government, since the loans were repaid.

1984 — Congress effectively takes over the ailing Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, which failed with $40 billion of assets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. injects $4.5 billion to buy bad loans.

1989 — Congress establishes the Resolution Trust Corp. to take over bad assets and make depositors whole. Resolving the S&L crisis takes six years and $125 billion in taxpayer money — roughly equal to $200 billion in today’s dollars.

1998 — The government brokers a $3.6 billion private bailout in the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, although no government money is involved.

2001 — Congress authorizes $5 billion in cash after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to help shore up the airline industry and follows up with $10 billion in loan guarantees.

2008:

March 16 — The Federal Reserve agrees to guarantee $29 billion of Bear Stearns’ assets in connection with the government-sponsored sale of the investment bank to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

July 11 — Federal regulators seize IndyMac Bank’s assets after the mortgage lender succumbs to the pressures of tighter credit, falling home prices and rising foreclosures. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says it will cost about $8.9 billion out of its $53 billion insurance fund.

Sept. 7 — The Treasury Department seizes teetering mortgage finance institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, temporarily putting them in a government conservatorship with plans to inject up to $100 billion into each.

Sept. 16 — The government announces an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue American International Group Inc., the world’s largest insurance company, in return for a 79.9 percent stake in AIG.

Sept. 19 — The Bush administration announces a plan to let the government buy hundreds of billions of dollars of bad mortgages and other forms of toxic debt that have been weighing down U.S. financial companies.

Doesn’t this echoes US as Bailout Nation ?

A woman was serving a life sentence in prison. Angry and resentful about her situation, she had decided that she would rather die than to live another year in prison.

Over the years she had become good friends with one of the prison caretakers. His job, among others, was to bury those prisoners who died in a graveyard just outside the prison walls. When a prisoner died, the caretaker rang a bell, which was heard by everyone. The caretaker then got the body and put it in a casket. Next, he entered his office to fill out the death certificate before returning to the casket to nail the lid shut. Finally, he put the casket on a wagon to take it to the graveyard and bury it.

Knowing this routine, the woman devised an escape plan and shared it with the caretaker. The next time the bell rang, the woman would leave her cell and sneak into the dark room where the coffins were kept. She would slip into the coffin with the dead body while the caretaker was filling out the death certificate. When the care-taker returned, he would nail the lid shut and take the coffin outside the prison with the woman in the coffin along with the dead body. He would then bury the coffin. The woman knew there would be enough air for her to breathe until later in the evening when the aretaker would return to the graveyard under the cover of darkness, dig up the coffin, open it, and set her free.

The caretaker was reluctant to go along with this plan, but since he and the woman had become good friends over the years, he agreed to do it.

The woman waited several weeks before someone in the prison died. She was asleep in her cell when she heard the death bell ring. She got up and slowly walked down the hallway. She was nearly caught a couple of times. Her heart was beating fast. She opened the door to the darkened room where the coffins were kept. Quietly in the dark, she found the coffin that contained the dead body, carefully climbed into the coffin and pulled the lid shut to wait for the caretaker to come and nail the lid shut.

Soon she heard footsteps and the pounding of the hammer and nails. Even though she was very uncomfortable in the coffin with the dead body, she knew that with each nail she was one step closer to freedom. The coffin was lifted onto the wagon and taken outside to the graveyard. She could feel the coffin being lowered into the ground. She didn’t make a sound as the coffin hit the bottom of the grave with a thud. Finally she heard the dirt dropping onto the top of the wooden coffin, and she knew that it was only a matter of time until she would be free at last. After several minutes of absolute silence, she began to laugh. She was free! She was free! Feeling curious, she decided to light a match to find out the identity of the dead prisoner beside her.

To her horror, she discovered that she was lying next to the dead caretaker.

Many people believe they have life all figured out….. but sometimes it just doesn’t turn out the way they planned it.

Think of a ‘Plan B’ !

Death never comes as welcomed, it comes without invitation and sometime even the same can knock your door when you are completely away from it somewhere in God’s Arena !!

Its Irorny but its the truth of how disaster our human life is .. .

Following is a short chronology of some of the worst stampedes in the last 20 years:

* March 1988: In Kathmandu, 70 fans are killed after a stampede towards locked exits in a hailstorm at Nepal’s national soccer stadium, the country’s worst civilian disaster.

* July 1990: 1,426 pilgrims are crushed to death inside al-Muaissem tunnel near Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The accident occurs on Eid al-Adha (The Feast of Sacrifice), Islam’s most important feast at the end of the annual Haj pilgrimage.

* May 1994: In Saudi Arabia, a stampede near Jamarat Bridge kills 270 where pilgrims hurl stones at piles of rocks symbolising the devil.

* April 1998: One hundred and nineteen Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death at the Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

* May 2001: In Ghana, 126 people are killed after a stampede at Accra’s main soccer stadium when police fire teargas at rioting fans in one of Africa’s worst soccer disasters.

* February 2004: A stampede kills 251 Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia near Jamarat Bridge during the ritual stoning of the devil at the annual Haj pilgrimage.

* January 2005: At least 265 Hindu pilgrims, including several women and children, are killed near a remote temple in India’s Maharashtra state.

* August 2005: At least 1,005 people die in Iraq when Shi’ites stampede off a bridge over the Tigris river in Baghdad panicked by rumours of a suicide bomber in the crowd.

* January 2006: Three hundred and sixty-two Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death at the eastern entrance of Mena’s Jamarat Bridge when pilgrims jostled to perform the stoning ritual between noon and sunset.

* February 2006: Seventy-one people are killed at a stadium in Manila as they scrambled to get into a popular Philippine television game show.

* September 2006: At least 51 people are killed in a Yemeni stadium where President Ali Abdullah Saleh was holding a pre-election rally in the southern province of Ibb.

* August 2008: Rumours of a landslide triggers a stampede by pilgrims in India at the Naina Devi temple, in Bilaspur district, in Himachal Pradesh. At least 145 people were killed and more than 100 people injured.