UPDATED: Kavips is taking dumbass pills or something
Some people are so used to blaming everything on Democrats that they just can’t not blame Democrats.
The fact of the matter is this bill sucked. It basically turned Paulson into the economic King of America, just like the first version. Only it did it on an installment plan and pretended to protect taxpeyers.
But the defeat of this is the begining, not the end. As David Sirota points out at kos, the Democratic Party now needs to go to work to make this bill a vehicle for “the kind of New Deal-style investments and regulations that are necessary to start rebuilding this country.”
Sirota’s basic conditions for any bailout, including a speculators tax, re-regulation, economic stimulus, bankruptcy law reform and aid to homeowners.
He states that no amount of tinkering with Paulson’s atrocity was going do the trick. Now they have to go back and start from scratch.
Some people bought the urgency, without getting a decent answer to “How urgent?” and without getting an answer to “What’s in it for us?”
This is not unlike the folks who blamed the Iraq war screw ups on those of us who spoke out against it.
This is not unlike the folks who would tell you that if you aren’t doing anything to be ashamed of, it shouldn’t bother you that the government is spying on you.
I could go on, but you get it.
Your government exists to be accountable to you, and printing money to give to failing banks isn’t all that sensible to me. And there are lots of folks who are way smarter about this than me who agree.
Henry Blodgett provides more detailed analysis of the failed bill and notes:
Executive compensation at bailed-out companies. Toothless: The plan ostensibly prohibits golden parachute payments to CEOs and other “C-level” execs at bailed-out companies. However, it really only prevents payments on severance deals that are struck AFTER the bailout (specifically, it prohibits these deals completely). There is nothing about cancelling the severance payments that the executives are ALREADY contractually entitled to. What this means in practice is that bailed-out companies will have trouble hiring the best talent…because why would you work at Bailed Out Company A when you could go across the street and get a fat severance deal? It also doesn’t mean the companies can’t pay their CEOs $500 million a year. IN ADDITION: There’s another absurd section that makes all compensation above $500,000 for the three highest paid employees at the company not tax-deductible for the company. This is LUDICROUS. It means the company can pay the executives anything it wants and that the penalty for this will be exacted on the company and its shareholders. (Unless we’re mistaken, Americans are furious that CEOs make $50 million a year for running companies into the ground, not that the $50 million is tax deductible).
This strikes kavips as worth voting for?
And there’ s more bamboozlement where that came from.
Correction to Jason330’s original article…..
It basically turned Paulson into the economic King of America, just like the first version…..
I think we can safely assume that because of the installment clauses added during the negotiations, that it would turn Obama’s Sec of Treasury (Dodd?) into ……. which would be an effective move at propelling Jason330’s original vision of an American New Deal into reality.
By the way Hoover failed to act aggressively, also.
Kavips,
Yellow cake.
You can still have an aggressive plan — it doesn’t have to be this one.
Bankruptcy reform? Like the kind Mr Carper and Mr Biden sold out for?
Some people bought the urgency, without getting a decent answer to “How urgent?”
Is the loss of $1.2 Trillion or the greatest ever stock market point drop, urgent enough for you?
This strikes kavips as worth voting for.
Yep. It does…. 🙂
er….why do you all think that the country is in the mess it is in right now? The unfettered ability for stock-holders to fucking run rampant on our asses. The new global economy crossed our sovereign threshold and now stock holders DO NOT REPRESENT American INTERESTS like this prick Bush is claiming.
Why should we go the length to protect companies and a Wall Street whose post-Reagan bottom line hasn’t been employee or USA first only the corporate fricking market share?
That pensions are involved says to me that the manangers of such accounts were the ones who went into the speculative arena of hedgers and played the ‘king’s game’ WHILE COLLECTING THE KING’s RANSOM. Hedgers, even with pensioner monies, still collected millions personally and paid the meager 15% tax.
The system failed itself and it has to correct itself. How many millions a year did Hankie Paulson make for the 8 or so years he led goldman Sachs? Last I had heard about GS was that they were starting a fund from which to buy/lease US infrastructure like the DE toll roads.
Nancy, your comment tells me you haven’t the slightest clue of how financial markets work?