Bailout Nation — Hell No, Mr. Paulson
As Jason notes below (and in my comment) the scope of this bailout just gets bigger. Now we apparently are going to be on the hook for foreign banks (whose expose to this toxic stuff is worse than many of our own banks) and for the credit card debt your cousin Stewart racked up on vacation in Cabo.
Today, lots of very smart financial heads have been responding to the bailout proposal:
Robert Kuttner; Robert Reich; and Bob Borosage, and Dean Baker (this is a very detailed set of principles to guide the restructuring).
All are calling for:
Maximum oversight and accountability with the taxpayers funds;
Banks have to have some skin in the game to ensure that taxpayers have a way to get some funds back;
Some reregulation;
Some limits on executive windfalls from this;
Some help for currently stressed homeowners.
Monday is the day to call or write not only your Congressional delegation to say Absolutely Not to this blank check, but contact the leadership to say no as well. Call the swtichboard at (202) 224-3121, and ask for the offices of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to register your opinion. Make sure to call Joe Biden, Tom Carper and Mike Castle with the same messages first.
Dems own the best cards at this point and will need every phone call or email we can send to get that spine they so badly need. The media drum beat of asking for a “clean bill” will start shortly and BushCo is already out lying about the potential of taxpayers making money out of the deal. Get to them now and get to them often to make them not cave on this one.
Tags: Bamboozled!, Bush's Fubar Economy
Now that we nationalizes the insurance companies and Investment Banking how about how about Universal Health Care and the Oil Companies. If we are going to give Wall Street $700 Billion dollars we might as well get some for us working stiffs.
So this bill went from rescue to a great big lovefest to the financial industry within days. We have to get this thing killed. I’m calling all of them this morning.
BTW, McCain said deregulation was responsible for economic growth of the 2000s.
El Somnambulo says, a whole lot of someones should call Tomas Carperito and tell him that he’d better not bail out the big ones while leaving the little ones he screwed on the bankruptcy legislation behind.
Joe Biden is about to cast his first vote against something a bank wants…
Again you miss the point. Deregulation is not what caused this problem. Loose credit to people who had no business with a mortgage followed by bundling of these bad loans to make room for more of them and banks/government entities all figuring home appreciation would take care of it all.
If some sort of bill doesn’t pass real soon working stiffs will suffer more than anyone else. You can have an election year issue or you can have a solution you can’t have both.
Mike the more i read your post the more I am glad that you are not running.
Mike…a $700 billion bailout is not a solution. A new government agency is not a solution. Giving Bush an open door to our financial system is not a solution.
Without adopting policies that increase savings, decrease consumption and reduce imports the US economy can only go on in the old fashion way – with ever more debt accumulation.
Based on Mike’s comments, he’s really just a typical Republican. He never hesitates to side with the powerful over the people.
“Deregulation is not what caused this problem. Loose credit to people who had no business with a mortgage followed by bundling of these bad loans to make room for more of them and banks/government entities all figuring home appreciation would take care of it all.”
This paragraph is oxymoronic. What would have prevented the excesses of sentence two? Not the solution offered by sentence one, which actually describes how sentence two could take place.
Conservative boilerplate about markets is now in tatters. You’ll have to wait a while for the foot soldiers to get word.
It reads as so:
“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
This scares the hell out of me. I do not trust Paulson, or any other individual on Earth for that matter, with this kind of power…with our money.
Pauly had a really bad make-up job on MTP too. Either that or he was spending too much time on Sarah’s tanning bed.
Simple, without the actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and loose credit we would not be discussing the issue.
The deregulation you speak of came from a Democratic President and required action from the private sector. Recent attempts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were rebuffed by Rep. Frank and Sen Dodd.
I don’t side with the powerful only the truth and this issue has nothing to do with conservative or liberal.
Well, I guess this was bound to happen — Protack campaigning for McCain means that he gets to be as uninformed and confused on this entire issue as his candidate. What puzzles me though, is that Protack has been around here longer than I have and you think that there is an audience for radio talking points here?
the more Protack campaigns for McInsane the less people in Delaware will vote for him.
how many of you actually emailed or called Biden, Carper and the misfit Castle?
Working Families Party and other small parties nationwide are demanding a bailout for american taxpayers, let the bankster/gangsters fail…wipe the debt on their backs, and start over.
Get ready for super staflagation, where everything we buy will be doubled or tripled.
Protack get your head out of you butt…DEREGULATION WAS A REPUBLICAN THING… stop blaming everyone except the republicrats who did this to america. George Bush bankrupted every company he ever had…this was Cheney/Bush/McCain/Castle and the go along democrats like Carper/Dodd/Pelosi who went along with all these Bush ponzi schemes.
Bundling mortgages into securities and selling them with a low-risk rating has everything to do with it. There was zero oversight on the ratings.
Those actions are results of deregulation. That is all.
The question is: Do you want to have the people who lobbied, profited, and caused this situation in charge of cleaning it up?
I am so tired of people trying to blame EVERYTHING on the homeowner.
Here’s a little light reading…
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/21/9322/74248/245/602838
“I am so tired of people trying to blame EVERYTHING on the homeowner”
And I’m tired of people here trying to blame everything on the Republicans. Liberal regulatory policies set the stage for this entire mess.
LOL!
Mike – I’m sorry but you’re a fool.
And I mean it this time!
Anybody catch how Terry Spence is campaigning as a Working Family Party candidate?