Hey, got some underperforming assets you'd like to unload on the taxpayer? Contact "Buy My Sh*tpile, Henry" at once! I'm thinking of putting all the crap we don't want anymore in a pile on the front lawn, and calling the Treasury Department to come by, cut us a check and haul it off. Why the hell not?
UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini says Republicans ought to vote no on the "Bush-Pelosi Wall Street Bailout" plan. Excerpt:
God Himself couldn't have given rank-and-file Republicans a better opportunity to create political space between themselves and the Administration. That's why I want to see 40 Republican No votes in the Senate, and 150+ in the House. If a bailout is to pass, let it be with Democratic votes. Let this be the political establishment (Bush Republicans in the White House + Democrats in Congress) saddling the taxpayers with hundreds of billions in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a single weekend, and enabled by Pelosi, btw), while principled Republicans say "No" and go to the country with a stinging indictment of the majority in Congress.
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If rank and file Repubs had a serious interest in fiscal responsibility, they never would have voted for GWB in the first place. Wasn't conservative economics professor Gramm one of the candidates in 2000, and lost? People need to get over the idea that Repubs are for responsible economics. There are only leftwing and rightwing welfare/warfare statists at this point.
Sarbanes-Oxley is not the problem. The problem is Reaganomics,which has carried forward long past his death. Deregulation at its finest. It has been a thirty plus year process for the principles of "Dutch from Dixon" to come to fruition (Ronald Reagan's nickname from his hometown from Dixon, Illinois), but now we have finally reached the end. Dutch is now there in the annals of financial history with Hoover, who grew up just down the road in West Branch, Iowa.
Look, folks, the fact is that there's $1 trillion or more in bad debt, sliced and diced into "securities," sprinkled throughout the financial system. Until it's filtered out of the system, all kinds of financial instruments are assumed to be shaky, even if they're not, and any number of banks and funds appear to be in danger of collapse, which they aren't unless everybody decides they are. That's how panic works.
Everybody from Henry Paulson to Paul Krugman has concluded that the best way to head off a panic is to take the bad paper out of the financial system and park it temporarily in the national debt. Desirable? No. Preferable to a domino-effect crash in the value of all securities and collapse of institutions that keep day-to-day economic activity going? Yes.
The constructive argument at this point is not whether there should be a bailout, but what form the bailout should take and what safeguards should be in place. Recriminations and ideological posturing are merely noise pollution.
MarcM, I am not referring to FDIC insurance. I said FDIC insurance should be increased. The point I am making with respect to money market funds is that they compete with Banks for capital and advantaging them is zero sum disadvantaging banks. Fed Funds is 2%. Yet, you can go to big stable bank and get a short CD for 4%. Why is that? Because banks are competing hard for deposits (capital) and are willing to pay up to get them. Making it harder for banks (traditional banks, not investment banks) only delays. We need a restoration of liquidity and credit and the fastest road there is healthy, well capitalized banks.
MarcM,
"Nice try Laura, but this pig is whole-hog GOP, through and through. It was engineered by the Bush administration and is being pushed through by them. Congress will hang some nice clothing on it and put some lipstick on its snout, but it is still a pig...a Republican pig."
Absolutely...it's one or two elected officials with a handful of appointed ones. That was my NON-PARTISAN point. Pelosi et al, as Speaker of the House, is representative of the window-dressing wrangling that we are currently seeing before they finally vote this pig through. And then we lose control over what happens to our taxes for the next coupla generations...
Taxation without representation
Personally, I can think of better ways to spend $700,000,000,000.00 dollars (did I get all the zeroes in?):
1. Let's have a year of Jubilee: cancel all mortgage debt (starting with the least financially stable amongst us) and then, consumer debt (at 24+% interest)... setting the slaves free. Why should multi-millionaires who have already proven to be criminally financially irresponsible have that kind of money and control?
B. Go after the post-modern Robber Barons: Indict those who have consistently raided healthy corporations, traded commodities they didn't own, engineered personal exit strategies that produced millions for themselves whilst leaving wreak and ruin in their wake. Liquidate ALL THEIR ASSETS; leave them one house, two cars, and some money in the bank (maybe $50,000...a shock to their system, I am sure); use those liquidated assets to help those who have become poorer or homeless because of their raider practices.
iii. If there is a bail-out, give Congress or an elected committee control over the mechanics of the bail-out so we have transparency and accountability. No more appointed financial whiz-kid gurus behind closed bank vaults.
And, MarcM? Rather than pointing fingers at the Republicans (and the case could be made this started with FDR...or, even, Alexander Hamilton and the Revolutionary War debt...), look at your own practices. How have you contributed to this mess? Have you wanted goods at unreasonably low, low prices? Double-digit returns on your investments? A job that pays thirty bucks an hour with an unlimited healthcare benefit at $5/month???
:grin:
Then you, too, are part of the problem, my friend. We have ALL been part of the problem...
Personally, I have bigger concerns: a Daughter who lives in China and my 14-month old GrandSon who has to drink imported milk and formula because of the corruption in the food industry. Just be glad you don't live there.
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