The $700 billion bailout: What do you think?

32 thoughts on “The $700 billion bailout: What do you think?”

1. This bailout is a FALSE crisis. Just like we were scared into rushing to judgment on the Iraq war because of the “crisis” of WMD and 9/11, this “crisis” is just as false. We are being scared into a rushed vote. DON’T FALL FOR IT!!!

   From what we are being told, banks made bad loans that are not being repaid and congress wants US to give these banks MORE money to make MORE bad loans? WTF?

   Doesn’t anyone see this is crazy thinking? Americans have been villified for getting into debt but now they want to give OUR money to banks so they can encourage us to get into MORE debt?

   Has everyone lost their minds?

   Write your congresspersons and Nancy Pelosi here:

   http://www.usalone.net/cindy/real_economists.php

   and tell them NO BAILOUT!
   NO “amended” bailout
   NO compromises
   NO “rescue” plan
   NO Bush-Paulson bailout PERIOD.

   They need to SCRAP this bill completely and listen to the 200 economists that mailed them and begged them to vote NO.

   They need to slow down, take TIME, look at how other countries did their banking problems in the past, and craft a bill that works from the bottom up. They need to STOP being rushed to vote on this because it IS a FALSE crisis.

   Please write your congresspersons NOW because they are going to try to push this through TONIGHT.

   Thanks!

2. Here’s some excellent stuff:

   This in from Michael Moore:
   http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=236

   And this from Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio – the cheap and cheerful solution:
   http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2008/09/defazio_offers_alternative_to.html

   DeFazio is opting for delayed structuralization, and that could buy us all some time to sort this out.

   I’d also vote for the Russell Crowe bailout plan!

3. The plan is not clear for the bailout. I would like to see that plan and a detailed risk assessment.

   I looked at the AIG website news releases. I found it interesting that in September AIG issued a new liablility policy package to cover investment managers from law suits over lost retirement funds. The other new package offer presented in September is to protect corporations from system burps that disrupt the flow of business (transportation problems, civil unrest, etc.).

   I want to believe that our house leaders are actually listening to their constituents in rejection of this plan, but lrust leads to disappointment much of the time. That the people are lighting up the dc switchboard is great. However, many around the world sounded off against Iraq gate, and we did it anyway.

   We are never given the information, we have to rely on our gut

4. ” Where is the outrage?”

   This is funny but it’s not enough. Outrage is not enough: I want what Pluto wants. I want the masses ( that’s you and me, people! we’re functional and elegant!) to *wise up* and take back the fruits of their labor and their power and their pride.

   To the wealthy, we are not people, we are income streams. The unions, the guardians of our integrity and well-being, were routed and humiliated and the rich got richer when they realized they could dissolve the factories, destroy the value of labor and feudalize *money itself*. Consequently there is no one at the table to speak up when these international criminals run their ponzi schemes on the middle class. It’s not even the money, it;s the *time*. If you spend twenty years on a livelihood, tending your tiny pile of security and Mr Big changes the game at year 21.5 — you’re screwed, right? The money is gone. The time is gone. You have been robbed of your life in just as appalling a fashion as if you had been clad in irons and thrown into the belly of some slaveship headed for hell.

   I don’t want a gimlet-eyed steelnosed accountant at that table, regulating the faucet flow of cash that pours nonstop into both wall street and government. You know who I want? I want the guy who *mows your lawn* on that regulatory commission. I want the tollbooth lady. I want the mailman to sit in on these highpowered meetings wherein people who live in a totally different economic universe than you and me decide what is going to happen to us; whether we are going to get a new car or not, or get a degree in engineering.

   What we need is a Debt Movement, akin to the Labor Movement of the 20’s. We need regular people at these tables, * from all nations*. This is the birth of global feudalism, and if you and me and and all the other income streams in the world don’t speak up now, we might never get another chance.

5. Caught some late night TV last night– as Russell Crowe said — if there are roughly 300 million people in the US — the government should just give each $1million.

   If that’s not a bailout alternative, what is? Surely, I could do quite well for a long time with my $1million.

6. When and How did we as a nation get so fucking complacent as to let our country be brought to the brink of ruin on every front by these disgusting, hypocritical bastards? Someone just sent me a great essay by Garrison Keillor on the whole MESS that is America right now. Worth reading (see below) and sharing.

   “WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
   By Garrison Keillor
   Sep. 24, 2008 | It’s just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and others don’t. The train engineer texting at the throttle (“HOW R U? C U L8R”) and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash — oh God, that is way too real. Everyone has had a moment of supreme stupidity that came close to killing somebody. Even atheists say a little prayer now and then: Dear God, I am an idiot, thank you for protecting my children.
   On the other hand, the federal bailout of the financial market (YAWN) is a calamity that people accept as if it were just one more hurricane. An air of crisis, the secretary of the Treasury striding down a hall at the Capitol with minions in his wake, solemn-faced congressmen at the microphones. Something must be done, harrumph harrumph. The Current Occupant pops out of the cuckoo clock and reads a few lines off a piece of paper, pronouncing all the words correctly. And the newscaster looks into the camera and says, “Etaoin shrdlu qwertyuiop.” Where is the outrage?
   Poor Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for tapping his wingtips in the men’s john, but his party proposes to spend 5 percent of the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk away with their fortunes intact while retirees see their 401K go pffffffff like a defunct air mattress, and it’s business as usual. Mr. McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please — remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators on behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things? Mr. McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.
   Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of perpetual profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn’t their money. It was your money they were messing with. And that’s why you need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say, “This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing backgammon.”
   The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim, crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked preachers who demand we trust them because they’re packing a Bible and God sent them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less government. Except when things crash, and then government has to pick up the pieces.
   Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And Mr. McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go from decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no conscience?
   It wasn’t their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were the cops?
   What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn’t funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.
   Mr. McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in Macy’s window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for awhile and maybe he can stretch it out until mid-November. But the truth is marching on. A few true conservatives are leading a charge against the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their cowboy economic philosophy was at fault here?”
   (Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, “Liberty,” published by Viking.)
   В© 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
   — By Garrison Keillor

7. JamesDefense: Right on.

   I’ve said it all along – slavery never ended. We are all slaves, but now we actually PAY to be the slaves.

   And that brings up another memory – in 1972 when I was dating my soon to be spouse, we went to a nightclub one Saturday night. His father said, “Are you going to a bar?” and I replied, “No, we are going to a nightclub.” He said, “HMMPH – Same Thing.” Yet I rather snobbishly thought I wouldn’t step foot in a bar!

   Oh yes, we lie to ourselves all the time. I have a young cousin who went bankrupt buying $300.00 high heels (the kind of shit we taxpayers are paying for). She was embarrassed to tell the sales girls (Who make what, $5.00 an hour?) that she couldn’t afford them! That is the power of advertising.

   I voted for Ron Paul and will vote for him in November. Hopefully his voters will be heard.

8. Well.

   This is what I’m mad about:

   I get that since the mid-1940’s we have moved from an economy based on industry and productivity to an economy that is directed by debt. The people who have money to lend make money on every transaction; they reap the rewards of holding capital the same way in earlier times plantation owners held workable land; and now these people live in a fairy kingdom called Richistan.

   Richistan sits on a high mountaintop of profits in the form of various tithes from the sharecroppers who must pay the rent on borrowed capital to survive. The game is rigged so that there must *always* be more and more wealth trickling up to Richistan. In this game, eventually everybody works on the plantation, farming their profits back into the massive holdings of some feudal overlord who is no longer limited by something as mundane as nationality.

   I get all this. It’s fine, in the grand scheme of things there are always more peons than peers. The thing that bothers me is, why did I bother to go to college? What was the point of it all? In fact, why offer these ridiculously overpriced tickets to the middle class in the form of diplomas when it would probably be more effective and lucrative to offer services directly to the Richistanis? Houseboy. Lawn seeder. Bonsai pruner. Silverware selector. Whatever.

   All right, I’ll tell you why. Because the upper class makes most of its money by lying to the middle class. By telling the middle class that it is somehow on its way to richistan but it needs a degree from the College of William and Mary and granite countertops and a Prius first — this is how the rich make most of their money. If they told the truth all they’d have is a bunch of houseboys. With lies they get millions of checks.

9. Like so many, I am not quite sure what to make of the failed (thus far) bailout. But I did read a very interesting article that makes a lot of sense to me, based on history.

   http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/we_are_all_mercantilists_now.html

   The new is the same-old-same-old and would appear that we may be on the road to becoming a country in service to the companies who would suck the consumers dry.

   Although as Sting would say, “History will teach us nothing,” perhaps we are doomed to repeat it.

10. My Dad used to say ‘A conservative is a liberal who’s been robbed’. I wish he were around today to ask him what he thinks of this situation. Reading the Spitzer article makes me feel robbed. Yet I am a complicit victim – I have consumer debt, a mortgage, etc.

    We are being rushed into a solution, by an administration that has definite trust issues!
    Even the terms of the bailout stink – the usual plea for a blank check with no checks and balances, no oversight.

    Here is a great article about the Bush legacy:
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/bush200712

    Watch any video by Ron Paul, here’s a good one:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticytEUvVhQ

    Ron Paul has lots of great perspective on the situation. He advocates contracting our obligations around the world – bringing home troops and stopping foreign aid to reign in our spending. It seems to me that we need to get current spending under control and make that part of the package. It’s complicated and it is all connected, but still, their may be a solution that doesn’t involve dumping a load of US taxpayer money into a potentially bottomless pit. We spend 400 million dollars a day on the Iraq/Afganistan wars.

    It’s just insane that Americans now own an insurance company, yet 15% of Americans are uninsured. It’s not just the financial system that is broken, all systems are malfunctioning. The cannibalistic health care system is a great example. The medical/pharmaceutical/industrial complex is out of control. It’s not about healing, it’s about profit. Meanwhile, much of our food is making us sick – unless you are a very aware consumer.

    My husband thinks we should go ahead, bail out wall street, but as part of the deal, we all get stock options. I think if there is a bailout, it needs to be constructed with the best interests of the taxpayers put first. Otherwise, we are rewarding bad behavior and the people who got rich on this get away and leave us holding the bag.
    I say, No Thanks. We’ve got to find some balance.

    “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine” – R.E.M.

11. I think it was 82 or 83 that we bought the VCR, because my sister in law and her 3 children were living with us. We were in a recession and she couldn’t find work. All three of the girls loved my garden and now they are gardeners too, preserving the fruits and vegetables for winter enjoyment.

    Jimmy Carter came close to balancing the budget. I always wondered what would have happened if he’d remained in office 4 more years. His outlook wasn’t very optimistic though. the voters like a winning attitude.

    My mother still talks about how horrible it was for the people who didn’t have work during the depression, and especially those who ended up working on the poor farm or living in the poor house. That in itself was probably enough to be sold on selling and buying.

    On the surface, materialism seems to be not the way we should have gone, for all the damage its done to our health and environment. But few people want to live poorly. The balance of nature in the Americas was upset the minute the Spaniards landed.

    But…..here we are with these little brains of ours ticking away and inventing new ways to do things. That Hadron Collider thingamajig may well yet save the day, if it doesn’t finish us off. LOL.

12. gardener,

    that simple, that true.
    …brilliant.
    c

13. All I know is that when I got married in 1973, we had to have great credit to qualify for a master card. When I bought a house in 1978, we had to have a large down payment, or qualify for a VA loan – and then the buyer had to agree to the points.

    In 2006, I applied for a loan at my bank, and was offered 4 times the purchase price of my house, which is about 50,000 more than it is worth, no questions asked. Seeing as we were retired, I thought it was a little insane. Then the bank changed owners – big surprise. I asked our bank manager how the bank was doing a few weeks ago and he said “Not a problem. We never got into the markets so we are pretty secure.” My bank is not on the list of banks that are in trouble.

    As I recall, it was the Clinton administration that changed the lending practices to make sure all Americans could own a home. Today I heard that the treasury secretary is a Democrat. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush pushed globalization, and so will Obama or McCain.

    This is much deeper than any of us can see. The steel mills have been downsized or closed in this country for a long time, and the Chinese are getting slave labor in Africa, per an article by a UK investigative writer at the BBC.

    I imagine that once salaries are busted down to $1.00 an hour in the USA, the jobs will come back. That’s about what my dad made when he got home from WWII. I made $2.00 an hour in 1969 and went into a cushy union job in 1970 at 3.17 per hour. By 1971 I was close to $5.00 an hour – that is how fast it kept going up. The unions have been all but busted.

    Is globalization a bad thing? I don’t know. I know that we paid $500 for our first VCR player in 1984! Gasp – that was a ton of money back then, but my spouse loves gadgets. We turned off the lights and pretended we were at the theater and watched Kurt Russell’s “The Thing” about 10 times in a row while drinking coca colas and eating popcorn. I doubt if anyone considers any movie watching without commercials a novelty anymore – but I have very fond memories of that period. Drinking more than one cola a week was even a pretty big deal. We bought one 8 pack of bottled colas each week, for which we paid a bottle deposit. I weighed about 110 pounds and he weighed about 160.

    The era of greed began with Ronald Reagan and continued through the Clinton years. All Bush has done is try to help people continue to live in the standard to which they had become accustomed. I don’t see anything evil in any of them, it’s just the way it was. We are fat in more ways than one.

    My mother always told me that the advertisers were the backbone of this country, because they were the ones that made us go out an buy things that create the work to keep everyone employed. I don’t know why she thought that since she and my father were very humble farmers who lived off the land. They enjoyed the electricity and heat I guess, and dinner out now and then.

14. I like this article, see link (from Bloomberg).
    Maybe the stock market has been manipulated today, and was dropped to scare people.
    Myself and most commenters whose opinion I value are vehemently against this bill.

    It is important to keep writing / phoning the reps to vote ‘nay’ should a second version be on the table this week. Also, thank them if they voted ‘nay’.

    http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=akLF7S6zlJdU&refer=home

15. I believe Bush – co is very angry and about to get very very angry. I Can see him banging his fist gently at first and saying ‘We have to do this for the Rock – er – fellas’, then the look on his face changes, and he gets that worried and confused look and in the spririt of a Cossack he decides it time to use force – now he thumps, his voice raises – an angry man shouting ‘WE HAVE TO DO THIS FOR THE ROCKERFELLAS’

    I Expect to hear a rally of support for the ‘new finacial system’ from countries that believe they are democratic and free, broke but democratic and free. Thats another story>

16. This is a comment I found from nancy’s blog at Starlight News on the crisis:

    “Folks – I think we are witnessing this Uranus square the Spring Equinox Ascendant right now. Everyone is up in arms about the bailout; the bailout fails and the Stock Market plunges. Agitation, rebellion – Uranus. Unfortunately this mood continues through to roughly 10/23 and then comes back in late November when Uranus goes direct. It never fully leaves but it will quiet some.

    I think we will get some kind of bailout around October 5 -7, when the pressure of the Inaugural progressed Moon begins to move away from natal Saturn. Until then, the administration is sh*tting bullets. As I told you long ago, with all the Saturn in this Inaugural chart, aspecting almost everything, this 2nd Bush term is about failure upon failure with no place to turn that can work. And where is the progressed Moon now but on that Saturn.”

    Eric: Don’t I recall one of your columns also stating the same thing about this Inagural? Bush re-taking the White House in 2004 meant he would be getting a huge Cosmic can of whoop-ass?

    Very true, indeed.

17. I don’t think Presidential politics are going to change things at this point, but I do think personal politics, the power of calling your congressperson, WILL.

    If ever there was a moment the very powers that have used their influence to rape democracy are more scared– its this one. They don’t want to people to wake up, but unfortunately for them, they already are. A friend related a tale of volunteering the Move On phone bank for Obama this last weekend, expecting alot of college kids. To her surprise, the room was filled entirely with people 45-80 years old. People with retirement benefits or people who are trying to amass retirement.

    The affect of the meltdown is widespread. The fury of the American populace is rising.

18. The Counterpunch.org website always has some trenchant analyses. Read Michael Hudson’s article posted on 9/25 to get the lowdown on how this bailout would not protect us from inflation once the investors are paid off and take their money overseas. Only 53% of Americans have a 401 (k) — where these stinky mortgage-backed securities are residing. I, for one, have been waiting for a massive redistribution of wealth since 2001 when the economy was tanking and someone (?) decided to let those planes fly into the Trade Towers so we could restart our economy.

    And if anyone thinks Barak Obama wants to do anything other than approve this bailout, they haven’t been listening to him. You can blame Bush and Paulson all you want, but this started with Clinton and Rubin — the man heading Barak’s team now. Change? Hope? Don’t expect presidential politics to provide these elusive items.

19. IMHO, all those panicked calls for a big, expensive, immediate Government bailout deal for Wall Street are premature. I feel like I’m being given a high-pressure sales pitch by some fast-talking flim-flam man who doesn’t want me to think too much about what he’s saying or look too closely at what he’s selling; instead, it’s all, “YOU MUST BUYBUYBUYOUT RIGHT NOW DON’T THINK LISTEN TO ME AND JUMP BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!!!!” Noticing you’re being given a high-pressure sales pitch should be a sign that something doesn’t add up and may be a bad idea to capitulate; if it was a good idea, then why all the coercive rush to make a hasty decision?

    The worst thing we could do right now is hash together some quick’n’dirty, ill-considered, short-sighted, politically horse-traded and compromised deal that would have serious long-range economic consequences, without taking time to “do the math” on what those consequences might be. Right now, we have no way of knowing some critical information we need to have for a good decision, information which can only be revealed with enough time for thorough investigation, rigorous calculation, and careful reasoning.

    If the Federal Government does anything at all to address the situation right now, we might apply some very simple fail-safes to ensure that money can keep moving through the market, to limit or prevent any possible further damage to the economy at large while the market situation plays itself out, and to buy enough time for a good, well-considered and economically-sound solution to be worked out, if in the end such a “big government” solution actually proves to be necessary. At the very least, anything we do right now should be treated as a temporary stop-gap to hold us through however long it may take to determine whether a longer-term solution is even needed and, if so, to craft that solution carefully.

    I have come to the realization by now that Government (and especially any Government monopoly) is always the worst, least effective, least efficient and most expensive solution to any problem; however, sometimes it’s the only comprehensive solution we have. Let’s make sure it really is our only solution before we conclude we have no recourse left but to apply it and, if we must, take the time to devise it as well and soundly as we possibly can.

    -Tyson

20. A language thing… Tachikata, when I wrote ‘Spitzer was demonized,’ that meant he was maliciously portrayed, *not* that he was a demon or –as you said– ‘devilish.’

    Though frankly, I am perfectly comfortable applying the word ‘diabolos’ (“thrown at an angle”) to men with high libido. Diabolos (the root for ‘devil’) also has an interesting connection with the number 7, the quintessentially female number.

    Men need three things to remain at high enough levels of androgen to function on this planet: sex, aggression and competition. In order to move our system of cognition and love into the next dispensation, working with the arch-libidinal is a necessary form of alchemy. I have less experience with aggression (well, not as little as I’d like 8^D), and even less with competition, but there are other magi of both sexes empowered to work on those transformations.

    Just think of sex as ‘lead.’ Poor Mr. Spitzer got cooked but good – and he ain’t alone. (Remember how ‘dark’ you were in that dream a few weeks ago). Look up the ‘nigredo’ phase and get back to me.

21. Eric has asked more than once what it will take to wake us all up and I’m thinking this is it. Incredible but wonderful, awful but great, the bailout was voted down. The Dow plunges and all I can think is it’s great news … sorta.

    Clearly (in my mind) it helped enormously that Bush was behind the thing, nothing says scam AND ill-advised AND knee-jerk AND loaded w/ goodies for the fat-cats like his imprimateur. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

22. “Spitzer was demonized during the preparatory stages of this mess?!! This resonates at rock-concert levels in other parts of my world… Honestly, this business of keeping people simultaneously sexually overamped and shamed has *got* to stop. Surely the governor of New York would be enough of a grown-up to have shrugged-off a threat of sexual blackmail. Isn’t there an innoculation for this yet? ”

    This is so reminiscent of Clinton and Lewinsky.

    In fact, it is by now a textbook case take down. Spitzer fingered the Bush Administration for impeding him in his regulatory job as “sheriff of Wall Street”, and they in turn started looking at him through the IRS, which yielded prostitution-ring gold.

23. oh yeah … if you’re going to spend a trillion dollars, there’s a lot of choices of where you can put that money. a lot of those choices could have really positive consequences. too bad there’s too much of a ‘rush’ and not enough consulation to actually give some thought to doing some good with the money (which of course is all being borrowed from foreign banks anyways)

24. so… as Michael Moore writes in an article on CommonDreams.org today, the rich are staging a coup today. that’s a pretty good way of putting it.

    back in 02-03, they claimed there were WMD in Iraq … millions of people were against the war, but that didn’t matter. they invaded, they’re still there, and they’ve spent somewhere in the same ballpark as this bailout on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    now they’re claiming there’s a financial crisis and they need to act (ie they need to do this bailout). one question is, why does the media and everyone just pass on their pronouncements with basically no questions asked. they already lied and fleeced you, so why do you give them all your trust again?

    it’s funny how, just before Bush’s term is up, they have to give away a trillion dollars

    but the real problem is there is no accountability and there is no representation in the current political system, and there is no broad-based organizing in the communities, networked together, that can actually exert the will of the people on any issue of substance in your country.

    until people wake up to that fact, and rearrange society so that the will of the people is actually what ends up happening, this type of thing can keep on going forever. they (the industrial ruling elite) control the government, control the media, and control the corporations. they control the money system.

    and, the authority of money is what people all over the place are controlled by – you want to eat? you want to live somewhere? you want to have clothes on your back? it’s all mediated through money (for now)

    let’s see if this ‘crisis’ aka opportunity to steal from the general population and give to the rich, is enough to get people to the point where they figure out they need to really organize with each other to take control back over their lives and their society

25. There was an oversight agency for Fannie and Freddie that was left nuetered by Congress; both their chairmen were left virtually autonomous and handsomely paid. The subprime mortgages that Paulson wants us all to take over is but a tip of the iceberg here and as we watch all the fallout it is painful but illuminating.

    Ummm, pain that’s illuminating … Chiron/Neptune/North Node is ON TOP of my Mercury/Ascending and within degress of my Sun. As we enjoy this new Moon in Libra I’m thinking (!!) that this light is shining a down on all the inequity in our system, from housing to banking to wall street, all that which supports our “democratic” way of life.

26. Spitzer was demonized during the preparatory stages of this mess?!! This resonates at rock-concert levels in other parts of my world… Honestly, this business of keeping people simultaneously sexually overamped and shamed has *got* to stop. Surely the governor of New York would be enough of a grown-up to have shrugged-off a threat of sexual blackmail. Isn’t there an innoculation for this yet?

    I just got back from southern CA, came home to find that the local daily did not print the revised letter I submitted on the bailout. They were apparently fishing for the three people in Austin who still didn’t absolutely hate the idea. You’ve heard some of my rant before, but in any case here is the body of the letter:

    >>I have read and re-read the bailout proposal several times and do not believe it should be implemented in its current form. The language contains several rather alarming provisions, including the ability to spend 700 billion at a time, with no limit no the number of expenditures; unlimited legal immunity for any mistakes or malfeasance in the expenditures; and the ability to raise the national debt ceiling at will.

    >>The ‘bailout’ actually resets the debt to 11.3 trillion, which is, interestingly enough, 90% of the conventionally-measured output of the entire US economy. Let me repeat: 90% of the ENTIRE economy. This is a very strange and ominous grab for power, since the debt ceiling is only altered by the OMB and Congress.

    >>This proposal should be rejected, and a much simpler loan, with very slow payouts, high levels of Congressional and citizen oversight, and accountability to every major pertinent legal structure should be proposed instead. If that isn’t acceptable, then let the insurance and mortgage agencies pay for their folly. We can more easily recover from a 7% loss of the economy than we can recover from a totalitarian power grab carried out through the Treasury department.

27. Congress should have brought in the great economists of our time to discuss this “BAILOUT” PACKAGE. None of them are qualified to be making the decisions they are making in four days. I believe there are better ways to tackle this problem. But as usual the U.S. taxpayer is the easiest target.

    It would be very, very challenging for me to spend 700 billion dollars.

28. Here’s a Washington Post article posted by Eliot Spitzer

    Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime
    How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers –

    By Eliot Spitzer

    Thursday, February 14, 2008; A25

    Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

    Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

    Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

    More at the link….(tried link below but it wasn’t working for me–perhaps others will have better luck)

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

29. While I dont want continuing ruin on any street (wall, main or mine) I feel certain that whatever agreement is being cobbled together at present is but a bandaid and it’s one none of us can afford. In order to know what needs doing here we have to know better the “whys” — I suspect it’s about mismanagement and greed; but the only answer here is taking a few breaths and allowing the chips to fall where they may. We need some ownership here and quite possibly reinstituting the banking and securities regs.

    It may seem harsh but enough with the small gestures that perpetuate this sham. Too much power in too few hands results in such corruption and catastrophe. Let’s own our part, take back our power and then we can fix this mess. For once I have something in common with the conservative republicans! I say no to this bailout.

30. I just saw what Michael Lutin wrote on his website: “the person who actually knows what is happening has been disgraced and discredited and publicly ruined several months ago and threatened with prison to shut him up. Can you guess who that is?”

    That must be Spitzer. Anybody have anything on his chart? I know PW did an article on him awhile back when the news first broke.

31. Bailout Linkfest by the Big Picture (Barry Ritholtz)

    http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/09/bailout-accord.html

32. I think that for me the main challenge has been to try to understand what this means for me and for us all. I don’t claim to have gotten a handle on it yet. I think the thought that keeps returning is one about us all being in this together, and we definitely have to focus on what connects us and our common interests. How to find the road out of the forest , we cannot ignore any clues or unlikely allies. And we now have to exemplify forgiveness for all the bad decisions that got us here and try to imagine a bigger picture that we can embody.