The latest round of Senate talks on the “bailout” package still hasn’t addressed directly helping the people who are being asked to foot the bill.
Reminds me of Wimpy- who wants a hamburger today, but will gladly pay you Tuesday – without saying what Tuesday in what year, with what money.
The bone that’s being thrown is raising the FDIC insurance level to $250K. You think anyone facing spiraling credit card rates and fees, predatory loans or foreclosure has over $100K in the bank? Didn’t think so.
To right the economy and get the public spending, banks lending, and some sort of semblance of sanity to emotion driven markets- we need systemic change, not window dressing- or the proverbial lipstick on a pig.
There have been a bunch of e-mails going around suggesting we just split up the $700 Billion and send it out to every individual in the country to let them pay off their debt and get on with it (I call this the payout bailout). Of course, this is a nice feel good Republican solution- we’ve tried to send people money before to “stimulate the economy” and it did- short term. This won’t do anything to stop the Wall Street Casino from continuing to play Russian Roulette with gigantic sums of money that’s been entrusted to them for “safe-keeping” in the form of pension funds and retirement accounts.
However, at this point- maybe we just let Wall Street suffer- foreclose on a few of the biggies, and do go with the payout bailout solution. Even if we capped the payoff to taxpayers at incomes under $250K and threw in some tax breaks- at least we would be able to put tangible assets in the hands of the taxpayers- something the current bailout fails to do.
Without systemic changes- no plan insures us from any future implosions. If there wasn’t an election right around the corner, none of this would have any chance at all of passing. After the election, unless we voted every incumbent out and immediately cut all ties to lobbyists and special interest groups, we couldn’t expect better legislation- because we don’t elect the best minds in the country to begin with.
Supposedly, the best minds in the country were working on Wall Street-at least, that’s what their pay suggested- and that’s how we got into this mess, wasn’t it?
Best Minds my ass. Manipulators of Money and we pay them the most, crazy. I am sorry, but the biggest BSers ended up on Wall Street.
Best minds – I thought Doctors and Lawyers were our best minds, bc every time I met one of these jokers they love to tell me how smart they are and what they do for a living – and I still have more cash then most of these Gods.
It seems to me that if you are smart then you are a Doctor or Lawyer – just ask one!
Nobody can take the money with them, so who cares who has what?
I’m much more impressed with people who are happy, and enjoy their life. They are the smartest.
Gene > Gods
You mock the Masters Of The Universe, but look: they invested in heavily risky schemes, made obscene amounts of money hand-over-fist when the getting was good, and now that the negatives are showing, the MOTU have now found a way to get We The People to pay off their debts?
I don’t think this crisis disproves how smart they are at all. No, all it proves is that if you have two groups, one with a founding document that talks about liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and a second group with a founding document that talks about making money for its members while conveniently making no mention of benefiting The People at large, it’s perhaps not the wisest idea to trust that that second group will take care of The People for no apparent reason.
Or, to paraphrase that popular pithy phrase: The Free Market isn’t free.
Oh, and a fun fact I heard earlier: to pay off all mortgages that are in default (more than 90 days overdue, not necessarily in forclosure yet) would cost the Government $144 billion.
So, what is the government’s plan? Shore up the foundation of these banks by paying off the mortgages and thus making it irrelevant if these CDS’s and CDO’s and whatnot have “toxic debt” in them? Or is it to give a $700 billion bailout that doesn’t even address the issue at all?
Another great podcast from James Howard Kunstler:
KunstlerCast #33: The Great Bailout 2008
http://media.libsyn.com/media/kunstlercast/KunstlerCast_33.mp3