Let your representatives in Washington know, with no reform, oversight and regulation...there will be no taxpayer bailout. Or at least that is what the D's should be saying. Call their bluff. No matter what the sun will rise the next morning...

I just sent an e-mail to my senator Chris Dodd. If anyone is in a position to have a say about this it is Senator Dodd. I told him why I feel that if there are no reforms there should be no bailout.

Don't dare cut the pay of our Wall Street titans!

If the Democrats don't get a backbone on this bailout there is no hope for them or us, they might as well swear in McCain and skip the election.

I don't question that we are on the edge of a major Depression comparable to 1929. So, something has to happen and happen fairly quickly. The only question is what that should be. Paulson has eliminated himself from any adult discussion of this with his "poison pill" nonsense, so it is up to the Democrats in Congress to hold hearings, expeditiously, and figure out the proper course of action.

That course of action cannot be to turn over another 3/4 trillion dollars to the Treasury dept to give to their favored financial business buddies. First we need reforms to be sure this won't happen again in another 6 months. Then we need some form of relief for ordinary citizens who will be badly damaged by the mismanagement of the Bush administration.

Maybe a demand for Bush and Cheney to resign is justified. If there were more than 4 months left of their disastrous rule I would say insist on that too, but not for just 4 months.

Finally, if taxpayers are going to hand out that much money, lets be sure we are buying something worth having, at a price consistent with the market price.

Last, it doesn't appear that Paulson should retain his job in any case, since as Dave Adams said, he seems to consider his job to be acting as the lawyer for the Wall Street crooks. Toss him off the bus.

I agree, this is the weekend to make your views known to your elected representatives. I sent e-mails to my two US Senators and I have faith they are tabulating their e-mails. My congressman is in bed with the perps so I don't expect anything from him.

If CEO comp limits are a poison pill then they don't need the bailout. It saves taxpayers a trillion dollars, that's something to celebrate.

The Republicans will try to ram through a bill with the minimum under orders from their masters on Wall Street. Taxpayers in Republican districts are far down the line after all the lobbyists.

Kevin Philips has interesting stuff to say.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09192008/watch2.html

I'm probably being dense here, but where is the money going to come from to pay for this? The US is the largest borrower in the world, and now it looks like we're going to try to increase out debt offerings by say 50% for the next two years or so - assuming all goes well. Does anyone think the US public is going to be reaching into their nonexistent savings to purchase the debt, or selling their stocks and mortgaging their homes to get in on this investment opportunity of a lifetime? (Surely no one thinks the US taxpayer is ever going to actually cover these debts anyway, barring the "then a miracle occurs" solution. My guess is the last-exit-before-tipping-point sign slipped by unnoticed some time ago.)

The money is going to have to come from foreign sources, and maybe for the sake of keeping things going, they will be willing to go along with this. But where does it end? When do they decide to write off their losses and foreclose on the US?

This insane proposal is the result of the logic that the treasury and the Fed has used since last August. The problem is actually at the grassroots level. The majority of the country, the people who constitute the producers and consumers of goods, have been starved of their share of the gains from productivity. As a substitute for non-existent wage increases or promotions, they were given amazing terms on credit. Thinking, logically, that lenders loan on the assumption that they will get back their money with interest, people took this as a signal that the old established pattern of wage gains and social mobility upward would re-establish itself. It didn't. Now, no matter how much money they give the wealthiest, this will not correct the basic problem. The houses people are living in are too expensive to keep and too cheap to sell.

Instead of concentrating on that problem, the Bush administration has concerned itself solely with the losses in the fictional financial sector. There is no hope for that sector, ultimately. There is nothing productive about creating a bet about a bet about a bet concerning the interest on a pool of loans, and if - as is the case - the original asset is worth far less than the bets on it, eventually that structure of betting will fold. There are 600 trillion dollars worth of derivatives out there, which is one of those tulipmania phenomena - if they crash, why should the citizens of the U.S. even care?

Much cheaper, and much more efficient, would be relief at the grassroots levels, which could be effected through the commercial banks. 700 billion dollars would much more easily be injected into the system at that level, with easy, low interest loans for households that need them to pay off high interest debts. That would keep aggregate demand high, and since the truth of the matter is that most corporations are not dependent on banks anymore for capital, it would keep the real economy going. Paulson's plan only makes sense as a way of continuing the swollen place of the financial sector in the American economy - what the governing class, conservative and liberal, has used as a substitute for the manufacturing sector they have blithely traded away. Paulson's plan won't work, and it will certainly take away money that is needed for the next year, as unemployment rises and states and locals suffer severe tax shortfalls. To pass it means cutting the throat of any liberal program for the next five years.