« Progressive Conditions for a Bailout | Home | Paulson Proposal: A Blank Check for Proven Incompetents »
Bailoutmania
As Yglesias wrote Thursday morning: "Who knew the "Washington Consensus" would die in Washington, DC under a Republican President in a mad fit of bailouts and nationalizations?"
What's your take on the bailout frenzy?
Advertisement
This is MADNESS! MADNESS, I say!
September 20, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The $700 billion bailout, the new $11.7 trillion dollar debt limit and waking up to a Marriott going up in flames in Pakistan should remind us to think, that after 8 years of war, torture, lies and spin... Bush is just keeping us safe, isn't he?
September 20, 2008 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope we all can remember Congress's other panic driven actions - the "Patriot Act", the Domestic Spying approval bill, the Iraq War resolution, etc. My dominant thought is that panic never results in good laws. It is time for Congress to dig in their heels, conduct a couple of expedited hearings to publicly ventilate this mess, and only then begin to discuss corrective actions.
The primary goal of any corrective action has to be to avoid a total collapse of our financial system. But, the secondary goal, which is equally important, is to correct the conditions that led us to this crisis. Foremost among those conditions was the total lack of oversight of the financial market, the total lack of regulation of that market, and the turning over of it to gamblers who knew the government would never allow them to lose their own shirts.
This time, those gamblers must be allowed to lose everything. No stockholder in the financial markets should be able to avoid losing their investments. No executive officer in that industry should have their golden parachute survive intact. And, to a man, those executives should become jobless, along with all of the members of their boards of directors.
September 20, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're hosed, dude. Bush is doing what he's always done: kicking the can down the road to just past November, making sure that it's someone else's problem. And if he can line the pockets of his friends in the process, that's super-awesome!
September 20, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course the dems will cave--it's what they do! Yet we continue to hope that somehow if Obama wins and we have a dem congress, things will get better...bwahahahaha!
September 20, 2008 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
They loot, They scoot. America gets the boot.
Under cover of panic they steal another trillion or so. In spite of all the paper debt, the financial industry still has way more than enough assets to work out their problems. Left to their own devices they could regroup and continue business as usual. But if they can inject a little fear and panic, BushCO can perpetrate yet another wonderful remedy from the sorry bag of tricks they have been using against America for the last 8 years.
September 20, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am angry. Blood boiling angry. The best I can do is not think about it and I can get by for a while. The bailout we're looking at--and anyone can look at it--the bailout we're looking at is nothing less than we the taxpayers directly assuming the debt that all these supposedly super-smart people took on for themselves. Based on the draft proposal (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21draftcnd.html) they will be completely absolved of their wrongdoing.
Not just absolved, but we are going to pay them for it. They're excesses over the past 8 years are now simply being shifted from people who should have known better to people who did nothing wrong. Once again, it will become the responsibility of my generation, and my children's generation.
And how is this bailout going to work? After 30 years of deregulating everything in sight, we have come to the brink of economic collapse, and the government's response is to ask for the authority to do anything it wants without any regulation. I'm sorry, but a two and half page law isn't good enough. There need to be safeguards in there that make sure Treasury isn't going to waste our money. There need to be safeguards that make sure the people responsible for this don't walk away with a single dime.
I am angry. There have to be some people we can throw in a federal prison--hopefully a federal supermax.
September 20, 2008 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Bush is doing what he's always done in his life, not just his presidential terms, find a bailout, watch while investors and employees suffer, and come out personally richer than when he went in. Think about the so called companies he's started and mismanaged. Think again, how he fared as a result. Think how his investors, customers, and employees fared, not so well. Only now, its the whole country, arguably the global financial system that is crashing on his watch. Two Bush, two major financial crises, no waiting. Think it's time to end the Bush family elective office run?
September 20, 2008 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is time to send GW on a tour of Europe, sans any Secret Service escorts. That should get him in prison in the Hague, where he belongs. Hopefully they will then try him for his war crimes sometime in the next 5 years, convict him, and make use of Spandau again.
September 20, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
The day after this November election, conservatives will begin in on how liberals tax and spend. They will disavow any responsibility for the bail-outs, blaming the Democrats for them. Any reply that points out how many Republicans were howling for bail-out intervention will result is teeth-gnashing lamentations about pretend conservatives and RINOs.
Contemporary Conservatives do not really believe that accepting responsibility for their actions is a core tenet of their philosophy. It is instead just a ploy they use, enabling them to hurl derogations at single moms, excepting any who also happen to be the daughter of a Republican politician.
September 21, 2008 12:41 AM | Reply | Permalink