Not a Bailout - A Rescue
Remember this exchange from the movie The American President?
Speechwriter Lewis Rothchild: People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
I don't know what it is about this election - from the overtones in Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech to Maureen Dowd's fly on the wall "interview" of Jed Bartlett in The New York Times -- but Aaron Sorkin seems to have more on the ball than any of our leaders in Washington.
Why did the $700 billion dollar plan fail? Because Americans, whose phone calls to their legislators have been running 100 or 200 to 1 against, have been told for the past two weeks that it is - to use the term originally assigned to it - a bail out. Only a few days later did Washington start calling it a "rescue."
Americans don't know the difference. And there is no reason they should. For no one - not Hank Paulson or Ben Bernanke or George Bush or Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama or John McCain - has really explained why it is a rescue and not a bailout, and what the passage of it means to them.
Let me give it a shot.
Here's what happens if we do not get some sort of a plan through Congress. Credit dries up. This means that if you want to get a car loan or a home equity loan or a student loan for your son or your daughter, you may not be able to. If you want to get a mortgage, you will have to come up with a more substantial downpayment - 20 percent in some parts of the country - and you will have to pay more.
An example: The national average on a 30-year fixed rate loan is 6.58%. At the beginning of this year, rates were more than half a point lower. This, despite the fact that the Federal Reserve has cut short-term interest rates in the interim.
This affects everyone - not just the person trying to buy that new home who is forced to pay more for that mortgage and not just the person trying to sell that home and buy a new one of their own.
If credit dries up and there is no plan, more of your neighbors will lose their homes. Those homes will sit empty because potential buyers will not be able to come up with the financing to take them off the market. Empty homes lower the value of the rest of the houses on the block - i.e. yours and mine. Fewer residents mean the town will have to raise taxes on those who remain - i.e. you and me - to pay for all the services that must continue from garbage pickup to snow removal to the running of the schools. Eventually, those residents - i.e. you and me - will get angry and vote down these seemingly ridiculous school budgets or vote in a new school board with a cost-cutting approach. The next thing you know it: There goes the football team.
Yes, supporting the rescue plan - and I do believe it is a rescue plan - means supporting your neighbors, your schools, your town, your children's future.
For the record, I am as annoyed as the rest of you that it has come to this. My book, Pay It Down, warned four years ago that the fact that we owed more on our homes than ever before, more on our cars than ever before, more on our credit cards than ever before, would come back to bite us in the end. Like so many of you did, I paid my mortgage, paid my car loan, paid off my credit cards in full every month. It feels like I am now being asked to pay the price for the excesses of others.
But this time I am willing - I want - to do just that. Why? Because I don't like the thought of a Friday night without a high school football game. And I don't like the taste of sand.
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I think it's time we revolt, en masse.
The problem with this plan is not that it has been improperly branded. The problem is that it will not fix the
problem and will waste taxpayer money. When are the elites in their bubble going to realize that voters oppose the plan because they are informed not because they are ignorant. The elites should start listening to the people and not to the lobbyists who live in the bubble with them. Repeatedly saying that people only oppose the plan because they are ignorant is not helping anything.
please, let's not rush a bill that will only make matters worse. There are some good sound alternatives being discussed in the house, give them a chance to come up with legislation that will really benefit the taxpayers - the sky won't fall
and don't let the corporate network talking heads rile you, quit listening to CNBC for one. They're owned by GE, and GE Capital is gonna take it in the shorts big time before this plays out, what they are giving you is not objective journalism.
This bill IS A SHAM! Oppose it at all costs!
It is a giant land grab by several institutions, especially Goldman Sachs! Just as NJ's governor, who is a former Goldman CEO, the Treasury head is former Goldman. Guess who is the main benefactor of this deal... you got it. Goldman! NJ's governor, Jon Corzine, and the NJ government over the past several years have directly benefitted Goldman Sachs. It's a running joke in NJ that Goldman seems to be the ONLY lending institution in the country. FORMER GOLDMAN PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF GOLDMAN... PERIOD!
Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is 100% correct on this problem. If the problem is bad mortgage debt, then the problem should be solved from the BOTTOM UP! Just like how Obama wants to correct the economy and help the middle-class by starting from the BOTTOM UP! If Goldman wasn't getting any money from this deal, I might think that it has a bit of legitimacy to it. But Goldman seems to be the main beneficiary of this plan.
Floating money from the TOP DOWN WILL NOT correct this problem - THE BAD MORTGAGES WILL STILL EXIST! Fix the bad mortgages - Stop the foreclosures - Save the people's homes. If the big institutions are complaining about the bad mortgages, How can they complain if the bad mortgages are addressed? DO NOT GIVE THEM THE MONEY DIRECTLY!
THIS IS A LAND GRAB AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
This is America! When a void happens, someone steps in to fill it! LET THEM FAIL!!! Who's going to bail the rest of us out if we can't pay our mortgage?? NO ONE! These people shouldn't have been in those houses to begin with! The banks were forced, through threats of lawsuits, being called "racist", to give out these loans to begin with! They didn't need a down payment, no income verification, no identification! Who, in their right mind, would give a loan to someone like that? LET THEM FAIL!!! Failure makes you stronger! Failure gives you initiative to come back better than ever! It is not my, nor anyone else's, responsibility to bail out someone that we don't know, because they were too stupid to know that they couldn't afford that house that they just "fell in love with!" This is ridiculous!
LET THEM FAIL!
****DELAY PASSING UNTIL AFTER ELECTIONS WHEN WE HAVE MORE CONTROL****
**********
"NO TAXES FOR RICH FOR TWO YEARS!" WHAT "COOKS"
REPUB "COOKS" ARE GOING TO PAY ZERO TAX MONEY FOR NEXT TWO YEARS
WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED - THIS WILL COST FAR MORE THAN $700 BILLION!
WITH NO CONTROLS
VOTE NO PLEASE VOTE NO!
Tom Delay the old Repub House Leader said he wants the CAPITAL GAINS TAX REDUCED TO ZERO FOR TWO YEARS!
That would be the BIGGEST BAILOUT IN OUR HISTORY!
IT WOULD MAKE THE $700 BILLION LOOK LIKE A peanut!
ANOTHER REPUB TAKE FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS!
OBAMA CAN KISS HIS PACKAGES GOODBYE!
DON'T LET THEM DO THIS!
TO HECK WITH THE HOUSE REPUBS!
House REPUBS ARE AFRAID OF LOSING ELECTIONS SO WAIT TILL THAT IS OVER THEN THEY CAN PUT AMERICA FIRST!
McCain needs rescue...
http://myr
If a house is empty, that means less tax revenue is needed, not the same amount. And yes the price will drop, but the reason it was high in the first place is because the dirtbag neighbor lied on their loan app. Let em burn.
So why is it necessary to rush through a plan that doesn't even begin to get at the root of the problem?
Why do we have to have "some sort of a plan" that is really just another scheme to consolidate more power in the hands of Corporate controlled Washington?
As far as I can tell, the only reason to rush this thing through is to preclude any consideration of real reform.
This sorry spectacle is the end game, the shock doctrine in action here in our own country. And it is being done to us by our own government.
Interestin
The BAIL OUT failed..
Yet the world is still here...
The US is still here...
Stocks actually rose a little yesterday.
So, this begs the question..
Do we really need to bail out Wall Street and those who gamed the system for their own benefit??
I don't think so...
Michale...
can we try this from another angle ??
If Credit Drys Up -
that means that federally chartered entities In 'The Business of Lending Money ' are no longer solvent
and in a world with a functioning Secretary of the Treasury, those entities would be seized period
no one is denying that if a butterfly flaps it's wings on Wall Street it may affect lending in Topeka - but some of us out here can't help but wonder if some of the 'credit is freezing up' warnings out there may in fact be hyped - a likely result when someone in DC is waving a trillion dollar check with minimal strings attached
address this issue where it will make a difference to working Americans - from the bottom up
Why not? The GSE's were in the business of bankrupting us, and now they've succeeded. And now the dirtbags that created them have returned to get more money from us. And the have the gall to point the finger at Wall Street, when they themselves created the problem. They created the GSE, and then the GSE's bribed them to keep the lending loose. These "representatives" need to have their assets seized and their careers terminated.
crazy as it seems, maybe forcing us to live within our means would be good. especially, since the dems have to coddle the reps. dems get some balls! we will have to live within our means until you do.
The Dems actually had the "balls" here. They clearly knew the strong opposition of the public yet, being more informed of the details of the mess and having a better understanding of it, they stepped up to the plate. They are our elected officials and they are trying to do the right thing. They Democrats in Congress may in fact be wrong, but they are certainly not being led around by the nose on this by the Republicans. In fact, they have been trying to convince the cowardly House Republicans to come along.
We elect representatives whom we hope are more informed than we are (and I think Crhis Dodd and Barney Frank fall into that category) and depend on their wisdom. This is a tough call but I think the public needs to consider that this now is a bipartisan effort, truly.
BARNEY FRANK?!!! The man who torpedoed the reform of Fannie and Freddie and thus ignited this fiasco? That's your source of wisdom, huh? God help us. Perhaps we deserve to be destroyed.
Banks were lending to people with stated income !! think about it.
Legislate that NOBODY gets a loan if they dont have credit score 700+. for Home loans, 20% downpayment should be must.
The banks have made loans to deadbeats for too long !! stop that madness first.
Stone heart! Stone heart! ;-)
Let's just take the $700B, eliminate the middleman, and have a "Bail Out Main Street' plan. Make the loans directly to Americans for student loans, autos, mortgages etc. Hold the CEOs and corporate scammers to the standards of the bankruptcy bill they wrote in 2005.....c
'Tis the politicians created this mess. Not Wall Street. However, Wall Street certainly joined in, and deserves to suffer too.
I'm with you, as long as congress goes down with them for starting the whole thing.
Moose-pucky! Credit will tighten up, as it surely should have with appropriate adult supervision instead of the deregulation madness the greed-heads are addicted to. But banks will always lend to qualified borrowers. It's how they make money.
Don't buy their scare tactics.
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