The House of Representatives, for once heeding the overwhelming voice of the public, voted down the massive $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banking interests.
By a vote of 228-205, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 bill was defeated across party lines, with rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans defeating the measure.
As expected, Wall Street reacted with shock and horror. The Dow Jones Industrials, already down 300 points, briefly dropped as much as 700 points before recovering somewhat. At this writing, the Dow is down 450 points. The NASDAQ is down roughly 125 points as Wall Street heads towards the close of the session.
It was obvious this morning that the authors of the bill - the administration and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, along with Democratic party leaders - did not have enough votes to pass the measure. The vote on the bill was delayed into the early afternoon, but once brought to a vote, the measure was soundly defeated.
It is unclear whether reconsideration will occur.
For the time being, the measure is dead. Now all the American people have to do is convince congress to recess, leave Washington and go back to their districts until the election is over. All members of the House of Representatives face reelection this year.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Bailout Plan Is Complete Garbage
The proposed federal bailout plan which is scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives today, Monday, September 29, 2008, is nothing more than a $700 billion expense to taxpayers, with limited congressional oversight and no hard provisions to limit executive enrichment or protect either homeowners or taxpayers.
In the bill, known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and available at publicmarkup.org here. enables the Secretary of the Treasury (currently, but hopefully for not much longer, Henry Paulson) to purchase a broad swatch of assets from virtually any type of American business.
The limits on spending (to buy bad debts and other assets) are initially $250 billion, but the mechanism for the Treasury Secretary to increase the spending amount up to and beyond $700 billion is quite easily facilitated.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the measure shortly after noon Eastern time, though passage is far from certain. Public opposition has been nearly universal. Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats are seen to be the major opposition to the bill, which is being supported by the President and the Democratic party leadership. Both House and Senate Republicans are largely divided on the issue.
Wall Street is providing few clues as to whether passage of the bill is necessary or wanted. The Dow is down 277.26, with the NASDAQ off 84.61 with a little more than an hour before the critical House vote.
If the measure succeeds, there is no guarantee that all of this spending will change anything in either the short or long term.
It is the position of this writer that the American public would be best served by the congress voting down this horrible piece of legislation, recessing and doing nothing. If the stock market is going to crash and the credit markets completely freeze up, then Wall Street and investors will receive exactly what they deserve. The plan proposed by the administration and changed only cosmetically by congress won't change much, if anything.
Additional information will be posted as events warrant.
In the bill, known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and available at publicmarkup.org here. enables the Secretary of the Treasury (currently, but hopefully for not much longer, Henry Paulson) to purchase a broad swatch of assets from virtually any type of American business.
The limits on spending (to buy bad debts and other assets) are initially $250 billion, but the mechanism for the Treasury Secretary to increase the spending amount up to and beyond $700 billion is quite easily facilitated.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the measure shortly after noon Eastern time, though passage is far from certain. Public opposition has been nearly universal. Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats are seen to be the major opposition to the bill, which is being supported by the President and the Democratic party leadership. Both House and Senate Republicans are largely divided on the issue.
Wall Street is providing few clues as to whether passage of the bill is necessary or wanted. The Dow is down 277.26, with the NASDAQ off 84.61 with a little more than an hour before the critical House vote.
If the measure succeeds, there is no guarantee that all of this spending will change anything in either the short or long term.
It is the position of this writer that the American public would be best served by the congress voting down this horrible piece of legislation, recessing and doing nothing. If the stock market is going to crash and the credit markets completely freeze up, then Wall Street and investors will receive exactly what they deserve. The plan proposed by the administration and changed only cosmetically by congress won't change much, if anything.
Additional information will be posted as events warrant.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Dow Ends Higher; What Happened to the Crisis?
Well, the markets gave us all the answer we were seeking. There really wasn't a "severe financial crisis" such as was being peddled by Henry Paulson and the Bush administration. It was all scare tactics designed to steal $700 billion dollars from US taxpayers and give the Treasury Secretary unimpeachable powers.
They failed. Miserably.
The Dow finished up 118 points on Friday and is up a very healthy 550 points since the low last Wednesday of 10,609. Wasn't it supposed to crash? My point exactly. This whole sordid affair is a massive fraud perpetrated by the White House and Treasury. There's no chance of passage by congress of anything even remotely resembling Paulson's original 3-page draft proposal.
Wall Street, at this point, doesn't really care. They seem to have matters under control. The media, however, are very confused. While many outlets are saying that McCain blew up the meeting at the White House, some right-wing radio hosts, especially Rush Limbaugh, are blaming Obama for killing the deal.
The NY Times provides some background to suggest that neither had much to do with killing the proposal.
Whatever the case, the White House was generally thwarted by rank-and-file Republicans in the House and Democrats in both houses. By doing nothing, so far, congress has saved us $700 billion. Paulson's plan was panned by Senator Richard Shelby and 200 economists as unworkable.
If the US economy was in serious circumstances, we could surely count on the current cast running the federal government to make a mess of it by playing politics, as they do, all the time, non-stop.
The blame for this one, though, falls surely on the Republicans, specifically the White House, for proposing the bailout to being with.
There may be a deal tonight, tomorrow, Sunday, Monday or never. At some point all of the congresspeople will want to get out of town and back to their districts and states for a recess until the election. Many are in tight races which could help explain the Republican motives at the start. By keeping incumbents in D.C., the challengers of many first-term Democrats would have an edge.
That doesn't seem to have worked out, however. Congress will recess sometime next week, if not over the weekend. There's no crisis and no need to rush any legislation. Both the congress and president will be lame ducks in less than 40 days. It's time for them to go home.
Dow 11,143.13 +121.07; NASDAQ 2,183.34 -3.23; S&P 500 1,213.27 +4.09; NYSE Composite 7,890.46 -37.41
On the day, though, the indices were split, decliners were far ahead of advancing issues, 3977-2362. The Dow, in particular, was aided by AIG being replaced with Kraft (KFT). New lows soared beyond new highs, 484-20.
There's obviously still considerable weakness in the markets, but nothing of the scale the public has been told. Further declines are ahead, maybe on the order of 10-20%, and we're in a slight recession which is likely to get worse before it gets better.
The upshot of all this malaise and confusion is that Main Street is one heck of a lot healthier than Wall Street. Small business should thrive over the coming months and years. Stocks may be under pressure for some time to come.
Oil slipped $1.13, closing at $106.89. Gold gained $6.50, to $888.50. Silver ended at $13.50, up 23 cents.
Volume was moderate to light, very un-crash-like.
NYSE Volume 1,169,676,000
NASDAQ Volume 1,986,540,000
They failed. Miserably.
The Dow finished up 118 points on Friday and is up a very healthy 550 points since the low last Wednesday of 10,609. Wasn't it supposed to crash? My point exactly. This whole sordid affair is a massive fraud perpetrated by the White House and Treasury. There's no chance of passage by congress of anything even remotely resembling Paulson's original 3-page draft proposal.
Wall Street, at this point, doesn't really care. They seem to have matters under control. The media, however, are very confused. While many outlets are saying that McCain blew up the meeting at the White House, some right-wing radio hosts, especially Rush Limbaugh, are blaming Obama for killing the deal.
The NY Times provides some background to suggest that neither had much to do with killing the proposal.
Whatever the case, the White House was generally thwarted by rank-and-file Republicans in the House and Democrats in both houses. By doing nothing, so far, congress has saved us $700 billion. Paulson's plan was panned by Senator Richard Shelby and 200 economists as unworkable.
If the US economy was in serious circumstances, we could surely count on the current cast running the federal government to make a mess of it by playing politics, as they do, all the time, non-stop.
The blame for this one, though, falls surely on the Republicans, specifically the White House, for proposing the bailout to being with.
There may be a deal tonight, tomorrow, Sunday, Monday or never. At some point all of the congresspeople will want to get out of town and back to their districts and states for a recess until the election. Many are in tight races which could help explain the Republican motives at the start. By keeping incumbents in D.C., the challengers of many first-term Democrats would have an edge.
That doesn't seem to have worked out, however. Congress will recess sometime next week, if not over the weekend. There's no crisis and no need to rush any legislation. Both the congress and president will be lame ducks in less than 40 days. It's time for them to go home.
Dow 11,143.13 +121.07; NASDAQ 2,183.34 -3.23; S&P 500 1,213.27 +4.09; NYSE Composite 7,890.46 -37.41
On the day, though, the indices were split, decliners were far ahead of advancing issues, 3977-2362. The Dow, in particular, was aided by AIG being replaced with Kraft (KFT). New lows soared beyond new highs, 484-20.
There's obviously still considerable weakness in the markets, but nothing of the scale the public has been told. Further declines are ahead, maybe on the order of 10-20%, and we're in a slight recession which is likely to get worse before it gets better.
The upshot of all this malaise and confusion is that Main Street is one heck of a lot healthier than Wall Street. Small business should thrive over the coming months and years. Stocks may be under pressure for some time to come.
Oil slipped $1.13, closing at $106.89. Gold gained $6.50, to $888.50. Silver ended at $13.50, up 23 cents.
Volume was moderate to light, very un-crash-like.
NYSE Volume 1,169,676,000
NASDAQ Volume 1,986,540,000
What? No Crash? And Why is This Man Laughing?
Overnight, while the politicians in Washington dreamt sweet dreams of re-election and $700 billion bailouts, the FDIC took over Washington Mutual, sold a portion of the assets to JP Morgan Chase (the rich really do get richer) for about $1.9 billion and maybe saved the economy.
Geez, regulators actually doing the right thing. What a concept.
In the nation's capitol, president Bush and his lackey, Treasury Secretary Henry (Hank) Paulson are watching in disbelief and horror that their "emergency" plan to save the economy from imminent financial "crisis" is going up in flames as members of their own party - House Republicans plus Senators Shelby and Bunning - are balking at the outlandish proposal.
And today... the stock market didn't crash. Well, at least not yet. The Dow is down about 60 points, but it's still a good 350 ahead of the closing low last Wednesday of 10,609, so, if there's going to be a sell-off because the bailout plan is not going to happen, it had better be a big one and it ought to happen soon.
Why? Because if the market doesn't crash today, it's not likely to any time soon. Meaning the beg scare the president and Paulson and Bernanke put on the American public was more or less a hoax. The world isn't ending, the financial underpinnings of the world economy are not crumbling (Weaker, sure. Crumbling, no.), and Wall Street doesn't need $700 billion of unfunded, must-be-borrowed taxpayer money to bail out about 3 or 4 already bankrupt big financial firms and another 12 to 20 smaller ones which are on the ropes, or, maybe it was just so they could hide all the lies and deceptions and outright theft that took place over the last 8 years.
That's probably already been handled. Goldman Sachs, in whose coffers most of the illegal money and wild derivatives rest, is now a bank holding company, a commercial bank, and the books will remain far from the peering eyes of bank regulators for the time being. Maybe the FBI will get a glimpse somewhere down the line, but probably not enough to indict anyone.
So, problem solved. Everybody have a nice weekend.
Wait a minute, you wonder. What about that screed of yesterday in which you basically outlined a doomsday scenario?
You ask. I answer.
At the time of that writing and all day Thursday, it looked very much like the congress was once again acceding to the wishes of the worst president in the history of the nation and was about to put American's further down the debt hole. I had wrapped up my writing for the day at about 5:00, before events at the White House changed the game.
The Wall Street Journal actually has a nice report on how things fell apart.
There is no deal. Not on Thursday and not today, anyhow. Lawmakers (I love how we give the slackers in congress such laudatory nicknames) say they will work over the weekend to hammer out a compromise, meaning that the Bush-Paulson plan is dead and US taxpayers won't be on the hook for a huge wad of money. There probably will be some kind of plan out of congress, but it will not be anywhere near the cost of $700. It's more likely that a phased-in plan could be worked out or that the whole thing gets put on hold until after the election and everyone in Washington goes back to their respective states and districts to resume campaigning, as was originally planned.
Additionally, the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah is September 29 through October 1, beginning and ending at sundown on those dates, Monday and Wednesday of next week.
Not to sound racist or anti-semetic, because I know how comments such as this one can be misinterpreted, but the likelihood of a crash occurring on, during or just prior to Rosh Hashanah are slim because there are many Jewish people involved in the functioning of top trading and financial firms and they'll not be working those days. Many Jews are quite devout and take their holidays seriously. Volume on the stock markets is noticeably down on most important Jewish holidays, and Rosh Hashanah is New Year for Jews. Happy New Year! The market's not going to crash.
So, I'm fine.
Actually, I'm laughing at John McCain's grandstanding - "I'm going to Washington to save the economy, dammit. No debate. This is too important."
I will make an easy buck off of this. I bet my father a dollar that McCain would show up for the debate despite his earlier statements. Either way, he looks bad. First, canceling the debate (or at least trying to) was a bad idea. Besides, there are 535 congressmen and 99 other Senators working on the economy. I don't think they'd really miss Big Bad John much since he hasn't actually attended Congress in the past two years. Actually, ditto for Obama. They've both been busy campaigning.
I am also laughing at this whole bogus "crisis" which Bush and Paulson schemed up. Well, it's been a week now since Paulson put together his $700 billion bailout plan. It's not going anywhere and since last Wednesday, when the Dow hit 10,609, it's actually up about 350 points and only down 50 today. That could change, but with the failure of WaMu, the nation's largest bank failure ever, last night, the market kind of just yawned. If there was going to be a crash, it would have occurred this morning. Crashes don't happen in the middle of the day.
I've been saying for a week that congress should do NOTHING, which is something at which they have great expertise. Go on recess, go home and campaign, come back after the election. Maybe my message is getting through.
I'm also laughing at Nancy Pelosi. You have to understand the humor in hearing her say, "We're not passing anything until we know the rank and file REPUBLICANS are on board." Hilarious!
And, finally, I'm laughing at eBay. Not only is the company self-destructing, but I've now been prohibited from posting on their message boards for the 4th time in the last 4 months. I've had 2 7-day suspensions, a 30-day suspension and now another 30 days in the hole. Seems the message board moderators are a little peeved about what I have to say about politics mostly. There are a couple of ex-military right-wingers on the board and I have been somewhat outspoken (who me?) about what they and the radio talk show hosts say being untrue and generally supporting the liberal or progressive or, actually, the reasoned and intelligent viewpoint. Every now and then, I do call somebody a name or two, but in general, my suspensions have been largely politically-motivated. Remember, one of McCain's top advisors is Meg Whitman, former CEO of ebay. Old loyalties die hard, I guess.
Anyhow, there are 39 days until the election. Obama's lead continues to build. There are only 116 days until Bush and Cheney are officially out of office. Looks like we may avoid going to war with Iran and the president's final attempt to screw American taxpayers out of $700 billion MORE dollars is going down in flames.
A few closing salient points:
The WSJ points out that "Republican leadership aides said as few as 30 to 40 of the 199 House Republicans could end up supporting the Bush package."
And, on Monday, an agitated Henry Paulson, responding to questions about the enormous price tag of his proposal by members of congress on Tuesday, Paulson snarled, "Guess what? The taxpayers are already on the hook." Guess again, Hank. We stopped listening to you and your people a long time ago. Repudiation deluxe!
Paulson reportedly got down on one knee on Thursday and begged Democrats not to disrail the plan. Begging. How quaint! He'd be begging for a shorter prison term if I had my way.
Queue up "Happy Days are Here Again" or maybe "Dancin' In the Street," because right now, things are certainly looking up for us working folks.
God Bless America!
(I'll have a final post for the week after the markets close, around 6:00 pm ET.)
Geez, regulators actually doing the right thing. What a concept.
In the nation's capitol, president Bush and his lackey, Treasury Secretary Henry (Hank) Paulson are watching in disbelief and horror that their "emergency" plan to save the economy from imminent financial "crisis" is going up in flames as members of their own party - House Republicans plus Senators Shelby and Bunning - are balking at the outlandish proposal.
And today... the stock market didn't crash. Well, at least not yet. The Dow is down about 60 points, but it's still a good 350 ahead of the closing low last Wednesday of 10,609, so, if there's going to be a sell-off because the bailout plan is not going to happen, it had better be a big one and it ought to happen soon.
Why? Because if the market doesn't crash today, it's not likely to any time soon. Meaning the beg scare the president and Paulson and Bernanke put on the American public was more or less a hoax. The world isn't ending, the financial underpinnings of the world economy are not crumbling (Weaker, sure. Crumbling, no.), and Wall Street doesn't need $700 billion of unfunded, must-be-borrowed taxpayer money to bail out about 3 or 4 already bankrupt big financial firms and another 12 to 20 smaller ones which are on the ropes, or, maybe it was just so they could hide all the lies and deceptions and outright theft that took place over the last 8 years.
That's probably already been handled. Goldman Sachs, in whose coffers most of the illegal money and wild derivatives rest, is now a bank holding company, a commercial bank, and the books will remain far from the peering eyes of bank regulators for the time being. Maybe the FBI will get a glimpse somewhere down the line, but probably not enough to indict anyone.
So, problem solved. Everybody have a nice weekend.
Wait a minute, you wonder. What about that screed of yesterday in which you basically outlined a doomsday scenario?
You ask. I answer.
At the time of that writing and all day Thursday, it looked very much like the congress was once again acceding to the wishes of the worst president in the history of the nation and was about to put American's further down the debt hole. I had wrapped up my writing for the day at about 5:00, before events at the White House changed the game.
The Wall Street Journal actually has a nice report on how things fell apart.
There is no deal. Not on Thursday and not today, anyhow. Lawmakers (I love how we give the slackers in congress such laudatory nicknames) say they will work over the weekend to hammer out a compromise, meaning that the Bush-Paulson plan is dead and US taxpayers won't be on the hook for a huge wad of money. There probably will be some kind of plan out of congress, but it will not be anywhere near the cost of $700. It's more likely that a phased-in plan could be worked out or that the whole thing gets put on hold until after the election and everyone in Washington goes back to their respective states and districts to resume campaigning, as was originally planned.
Additionally, the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah is September 29 through October 1, beginning and ending at sundown on those dates, Monday and Wednesday of next week.
Not to sound racist or anti-semetic, because I know how comments such as this one can be misinterpreted, but the likelihood of a crash occurring on, during or just prior to Rosh Hashanah are slim because there are many Jewish people involved in the functioning of top trading and financial firms and they'll not be working those days. Many Jews are quite devout and take their holidays seriously. Volume on the stock markets is noticeably down on most important Jewish holidays, and Rosh Hashanah is New Year for Jews. Happy New Year! The market's not going to crash.
So, I'm fine.
Actually, I'm laughing at John McCain's grandstanding - "I'm going to Washington to save the economy, dammit. No debate. This is too important."
I will make an easy buck off of this. I bet my father a dollar that McCain would show up for the debate despite his earlier statements. Either way, he looks bad. First, canceling the debate (or at least trying to) was a bad idea. Besides, there are 535 congressmen and 99 other Senators working on the economy. I don't think they'd really miss Big Bad John much since he hasn't actually attended Congress in the past two years. Actually, ditto for Obama. They've both been busy campaigning.
I am also laughing at this whole bogus "crisis" which Bush and Paulson schemed up. Well, it's been a week now since Paulson put together his $700 billion bailout plan. It's not going anywhere and since last Wednesday, when the Dow hit 10,609, it's actually up about 350 points and only down 50 today. That could change, but with the failure of WaMu, the nation's largest bank failure ever, last night, the market kind of just yawned. If there was going to be a crash, it would have occurred this morning. Crashes don't happen in the middle of the day.
I've been saying for a week that congress should do NOTHING, which is something at which they have great expertise. Go on recess, go home and campaign, come back after the election. Maybe my message is getting through.
I'm also laughing at Nancy Pelosi. You have to understand the humor in hearing her say, "We're not passing anything until we know the rank and file REPUBLICANS are on board." Hilarious!
And, finally, I'm laughing at eBay. Not only is the company self-destructing, but I've now been prohibited from posting on their message boards for the 4th time in the last 4 months. I've had 2 7-day suspensions, a 30-day suspension and now another 30 days in the hole. Seems the message board moderators are a little peeved about what I have to say about politics mostly. There are a couple of ex-military right-wingers on the board and I have been somewhat outspoken (who me?) about what they and the radio talk show hosts say being untrue and generally supporting the liberal or progressive or, actually, the reasoned and intelligent viewpoint. Every now and then, I do call somebody a name or two, but in general, my suspensions have been largely politically-motivated. Remember, one of McCain's top advisors is Meg Whitman, former CEO of ebay. Old loyalties die hard, I guess.
Anyhow, there are 39 days until the election. Obama's lead continues to build. There are only 116 days until Bush and Cheney are officially out of office. Looks like we may avoid going to war with Iran and the president's final attempt to screw American taxpayers out of $700 billion MORE dollars is going down in flames.
A few closing salient points:
The WSJ points out that "Republican leadership aides said as few as 30 to 40 of the 199 House Republicans could end up supporting the Bush package."
And, on Monday, an agitated Henry Paulson, responding to questions about the enormous price tag of his proposal by members of congress on Tuesday, Paulson snarled, "Guess what? The taxpayers are already on the hook." Guess again, Hank. We stopped listening to you and your people a long time ago. Repudiation deluxe!
Paulson reportedly got down on one knee on Thursday and begged Democrats not to disrail the plan. Begging. How quaint! He'd be begging for a shorter prison term if I had my way.
Queue up "Happy Days are Here Again" or maybe "Dancin' In the Street," because right now, things are certainly looking up for us working folks.
God Bless America!
(I'll have a final post for the week after the markets close, around 6:00 pm ET.)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Joy Ride Up (and Down) Wall Street (Part 1)
Editor's Note: There is so much to be said here, I could write for days and not even begin to scratch the surface, so today's normal single post is being broken into two parts, but since this is a blog in reverse chronological order, I'm publishing this part last.
First, an overview of the day's events.
Basically, if you're not up to speed on the destruction of the American financial, legal and constitutional system. The administration and the congress - collectively the worst bunch of people ever elected to public office - have conspired to take $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money, ostensively to bail out Wall Street and foreign firms which are likely already insolvent, and buy up their unsalable bad paper.
There will, as usual, be cursory oversight and some lame, toothless provisions to limit executive pay for plan participants.
Stocks soared on reports suggesting swift passage of the legislation, with bipartisan agreement. President Bush met with Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum, otherwise known as candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom pledge change, but, when it really matters, simply go along with the status quo.
The Dow rallied nearly 200 points, though it was up over 300 at different points of the day.
Dow 11,022.06 +196.89; NASDAQ 2,186.57 +30.89; S&P 500 1,209.18 +23.31; NYSE Composite 7,927.87 +159.05
Advancers trampled decliners, 4205-2145, but check out the new highs (23) to new lows (277), 12-1, not very promising. I'd say, even with this artificial stimulus stocks still aren't going anywhere soon, except lower.
Oil gained $2.29, to $108.02. No surprise there, or in metals movement. Gold sank $13.00, to $882.00. Silver fell 17 cents to $13.28.
Continue to part 2...
First, an overview of the day's events.
Basically, if you're not up to speed on the destruction of the American financial, legal and constitutional system. The administration and the congress - collectively the worst bunch of people ever elected to public office - have conspired to take $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money, ostensively to bail out Wall Street and foreign firms which are likely already insolvent, and buy up their unsalable bad paper.
There will, as usual, be cursory oversight and some lame, toothless provisions to limit executive pay for plan participants.
Stocks soared on reports suggesting swift passage of the legislation, with bipartisan agreement. President Bush met with Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum, otherwise known as candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom pledge change, but, when it really matters, simply go along with the status quo.
The Dow rallied nearly 200 points, though it was up over 300 at different points of the day.
Dow 11,022.06 +196.89; NASDAQ 2,186.57 +30.89; S&P 500 1,209.18 +23.31; NYSE Composite 7,927.87 +159.05
Advancers trampled decliners, 4205-2145, but check out the new highs (23) to new lows (277), 12-1, not very promising. I'd say, even with this artificial stimulus stocks still aren't going anywhere soon, except lower.
Oil gained $2.29, to $108.02. No surprise there, or in metals movement. Gold sank $13.00, to $882.00. Silver fell 17 cents to $13.28.
Continue to part 2...
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