The problem with this massive 700 billion dollar bailout is that it bails out the wrong people!
It saves the giant financial institutes from taking a monstrous financial hit after they gambled with their money and the money of the people they talked into purchasing mortgages that they simply could not afford. But they SHOULD take a huge financial hit. That is how capitalism works.
The people who need to be rescued are the homeowners who trusted the advice of these criminals and purchased homes that they were not going to be able to afford. Sure we can blame them, but they only accepted the risk because they were told by trusted financial institutes that everything would work out fine. So now the financial giants still get to call themselves "giants" but the homeowners are just going to continue faulting on their loans. This is a temporary solution and will not solve the real problem.
And who is going to foot this 700 billion dollar bill you ask? Well you and your children will of course. It just gets added to the national debt. (According to the Star Tribune: To accommodate the bailout, the proposal would raise the national debt ceiling from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion. )
If you click the title of this post you will find the actual proposal being put before Congress right now. If you read it carefully you will see that it gives absolute control to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson to do with this money whatever the hell he wants. If you are too lazy to click the link then you can read the most important and frightening part right here:
Sec. 8. Review.
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.
So the Secretary of the Treasury will get TOTAL control over this money, and NOBODY will be allowed to oversee his decisions or provide any input. Does THAT seem like a good idea to anybody? I mean wasn't he and the Bush administration the ones in charge when this crisis occured?
Well Randi Rhodes, progressive radio personality, and out spoken critic of this bailout offers this alternative idea to the one offered by the Bush administration.
1. Give Homeowners the ability to negotiate home loans, car loans, credit card debt .
Set up a Resolution Trust Corporation to buy back homes we can't afford to keep with a Board of Directors to monitor all purchases and sales.
2. Immediately force Financial Institutions to stop paying dividends to shareholders.
Sell the hard assets of failed financial institutions, offices, buildings, computers, desks, any real property they owned.
3. Oversight on the entire Bailout process through a Board of Directors to oversee any auction of company assets.
4. Charge CEOs with fraud and levy huge fines on those who profited from Fraud and Misery.
Enact a law that states that a CEO can not make more than 144 times the amount the lowest paid worker makes.
5. Ban NO BID contracts with shadowy people who for a profit will price and sell assets, loans, banks
Yeah is it okay if we offer this Secretary of the Treasury job to Randi Rhodes? Because her idea makes a hell of lot more sense then Paulson's does.
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This is an amazing bill that puts the pursestrings of the nation into the hands of a political appointee. Why even bother having an election? With this bill the Treasury Secretary will hold all the power.
ReplyDeleteRep. Barney Frank has an alternative bill going, hope there will be compromise.
BTW, thanks for posting the 60 minute interview with Obama.
My pleasure.
ReplyDeleteLove Randi's plan. If only us "little people" mattered at all.
ReplyDeleteA PhD in history here in South Carolina had this to say in response to an email I send him about the bailout of even foreign banks:
That's why the Ned Beatty character in "Network" was so prescient and frightening. He declared the end of nations in a new era where the international ebb and flow of money in all forms was ascendant. These folks with their Carlyle Groups, Trilateral Commissions, international conglomerates, etc. aren't interested in outdated notions of nations. Heck, Halliburton and probably Blackwater aren't even American companies. their tax-sheltered HQs are far away. That's why Qatar, Dubai, Cayman Islands et al. are perfect places to do business. There's no there and what passes for "there" is completely artificial.
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The best explanation I've ever read for all of it came from an Americablog reader:
"For all the Bushista song and dance and singing of hymns to US jingoism, they are not Americans. They aren't citizens of any nation in the world. They exist in a layer beyond nations, beholden to and recognizing only other extranational actors. Their allegiance is to their class, not to any country or people not of them.
We aren't part of their world."
There is a campaign to stop this. Please, join and publish in all your weblogs. Go to
ReplyDeletehttp://www.votenobailout.org/
I have joined from Puerto Rico.