The current financial crisis facing our country has been caused by the extreme right-wing economic policies pursued by the Bush administration. These policies, which include huge tax breaks for the rich, unfettered free trade and the wholesale deregulation of commerce, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.
The middle class has really been under assault. Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, median family income for working Americans has declined by more than $2,000, more than 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, over 4 million have lost their pensions, foreclosures are at an all time high, total consumer debt has more than doubled, and we have a national debt of over $9.7 trillion dollars.
While the middle class collapses, the richest people in this country have made out like bandits and have not had it so good since the 1920s. The top 0.1 percent now earn more money than the bottom 50 percent of Americans, and the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The wealthiest 400 people in our country saw their wealth increase by $670 billion while Bush has been president. In the midst of all of this, Bush lowered taxes on the very rich so that they are paying lower income tax rates than teachers, police officers or nurses.
Now, having mismanaged the economy for eight years as well as having lied about our situation by continually insisting, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," the Bush administration, six weeks before an election, wants the middle class of this country to spend many hundreds of billions on a bailout. The wealthiest people, who have benefited from Bush's policies and are in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all. This is absurd. This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.
In my view, we need to go forward in addressing this financial crisis by insisting on four basic principles:
(1) The people who can best afford to pay and the people who have benefited most from Bush's economic policies are the people who should provide the funds for the bailout. It would be immoral to ask the middle class, the people whose standard of living has declined under Bush, to pay for this bailout while the rich, once again, avoid their responsibilities. Further, if the government is going to save companies from bankruptcy, the taxpayers of this country should be rewarded for assuming the risk by sharing in the gains that result from this government bailout.
Specifically, to pay for the bailout, which is estimated to cost up to $1 trillion, the government should:
a) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;
b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies' stock goes up.
(2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect working families from the difficult times they are experiencing. We must ensure that every child has health insurance and that every American has access to quality health and dental care, that families can send their children to college, that seniors are not allowed to go without heat in the winter, and that no American goes to bed hungry.
(3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999. That means re-regulating the energy markets so that we never again see the rampant speculation in oil that helped drive up prices. That means regulating or abolishing various financial instruments that have created the enormous shadow banking system that is at the heart of the collapse of AIG and the financial services meltdown.
(4) We must end the danger posed by companies that are "too big too fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up. Right now, for example, the Bank of America, the nation's largest depository institution, has absorbed Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest brokerage house. We should not be trying to solve the current financial crisis by creating even larger, more powerful institutions. Their failure could cause even more harm to the entire economy.
stand up and salute him.
Congress should be fired for not supporting him.
The latest mass protests in Boston against the Bush/Paulson “corporate financial Empire’s” demands on the people are lighting a fire that this empire will live to regret.
The news of mass protests from Boston is not a second Boston T(reasury) Party, but a continuation of the "outrage" against Empire that started the original Boston Tea Party!
This "outrage" in Boston is a new 'shot heard round the world' against the complete political economic empire (like the British Empire) that allows ruling-elite 'corporate/financial Empire' to metastasize from the economic realm and take-over the political realm.
We patriots need to now continue the American Revolution, that allows America's world-changing concept of 'democracy' to freely spread from the political realm to the whole of our indivisible political economy.
'Free market democracy' is a myth --- a lie that never existed and was made up by the ruling-elite's 'corporatist Empire' to make their economic take-over of our waning political democracy sound more friendly than the truthful term; 'fascism'.
What we are facing is the final showdown between the economic empire of ruling-elite financial royalists against the very concept of America's most innovative contribution to the world: democracy --- vs. the chance, with our courage, to finally complete the American Revolution against the rule of empire in all aspects of our lives and liberty.
To be fair though, why not just throw in the whole top one percent and make them give up all but say 10% or so of their ungodly fortunes to pay this seeing as it's pretty much all of their poor decisionmaking and greed that came to this. And with the generous surplus that would result from this we could make a huge dent in the deficit.
Or the ultimate slap in the face... make all those uber-rich anal rententives actually EARN their pay like the rest of us. (Can anyone else imagine hearing Bill Gates asking "Would you like fries with that?" then getting served by Warren Buffet:)
VOTE OBAMA
It may be that this election doesn't matter, that even if Obama gets into the White House, he'll discover that the buttons are no longer connected to anything. So will McCain, though it will be his buddies running things. In McCain's case, I don't think I want the buttons to work, particularly the one that launches the nukes.
The solution is simple.....since we (taxpayers) are now in the mortgage business ...we should offer the following plan: A fixed rate 3% mortgage to all owner occupied homeowners for a thirty year term and offered for the next 3 years. 3-30-36. The impact is obvious.
Lake Worth, Florida
Moreover, what is the total bailout today from the US Federal Reserve & Treasury in comparison to the total number of people below the poverty line or persons without health insurance?
It appears that while the CEOs of major investment banks, mortgage houses and brokerage firms have made huge salaries over the past 5 years, we are now watching as our tax dollars go (freely or without clear conditions) to bailout what was a free market capitalist economy.
Are we really opening up the Treasury because we realize our economic fundamentals were flawed and rampant with greed where now risk is reaping taxpayer rewards? Is the CEO analogy as follows: the inner city drug lord (mortgage companies & investment bank CEOs) and gun dealers (rating agencies) got their minions (bankers and analysts) to do their dirty work and walk away with millions in pay, stock options, retirement, etc?
Do they get their large compensation packages, pensions, retirement and estates with no questions by the judicial branch of our government? Really, are the scales of a democracy in action only for the rich?
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2008/09/current-events---what-is-going-on-in-the-financial-markets.html
to start. Read some of the blog posts at the end. And then go to the top page:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
to get a start on where things are going to go and how we can start solving the REAL problem.
Bailout? ok
Repeal bad Bankruptcy law
end Bush Tax cuts for the rich.
Don't give any more power to the Executive Branch!
Pelosi? Ried?
Is it better to Rescind the act creating it, or Nationalize it? How about Condemn it.
1) We write a trillion dollar blank check of taxpayer dollars to the Bush administration.
2)????
3) Profit!!!