"Is this the United States Congress or is it the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?

As my mother would put it: "a frage"

(For those with no Yiddish, it means :"Are you asking a serious question?")

It is difficult in some regards not to hope for the eventual defeat of any of these interventions under the heading "La victoire du pire".

Of course, that would bring us even closer to the above mentioned "apocalyptic Marxists"...

(Precious blood of the sweet baby Jesus, I would love to see just one Marxist, one more time before I die...)

Debt Junkies Must Go Cold Turkey
September 30, 2008 (LPAC)--Angry that the American people screwed up their bailout deal, the parasites are pulling out all the stops to make sure the bailout passes on the next vote. The problem is, they don't have as many stops to pull as they used to. They are getting desperate, because they are far more bankrupt than they have admitted. After all, you'd have to be pretty desperate to trot out President George W. Bush, perhaps the most despised and contemptible man in the country, to try to push the bill. Most people wouldn't buy a used car from that man, much less give him $700 billion. This is a save-the-parasites operation, pure and simple. The same financial system which destroyed the industrial might of America, and thus destroyed itself, is now demanding that it be saved. Why? So it can do us even more damage?

We are witnessing the Big Lie at work. The claim is being made that the bailout probably won't cost $700 billion, that it might even turn a profit in the end, because the assets will have value. Do you really believe that, if the banks thought there was profit to be had in these assets, they would offer to share that profit with the taxpayer? Not a chance. They know these assets are worthless, so they are doing what they always do, which is try to unload them on the suckers. The reality is that $700 billion is just a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars that will be required to make a significant difference to the banks. Paulson and Bernanke know this, the banks know this, and they are simply lying to the American people.

The real issue here, though, is not the cost of the plan, but that the plan will not work, and is just another in a string of incompetent actions by the people who created this disaster in the first place. The problem facing America is that the productive side of our economy has been destroyed by these idiotic economic policies, to the point that it can no longer support the mountain of debt which has been piled upon it. The bailout plan which the bankers are pushing as essential to save "Main Street," would simply pile more debt on top the mountain, while moving it from the books of the banks to the books of the government, and thus the taxpayers. It would do nothing, nothing at all, to solve the fundamental problem, which is the lack of productivity in the economy.

Our economy is addicted to debt, but we have reached the point where that addiction is killing us. The debt junkies in the banks and the big corporations are in withdrawal as their financial system dies, and are screaming for a fix. Just one more hit, they promise, and then we'll straighten out and kick the habit. But that one more dose will kill them, and us, because we, too, are addicted to debt. The more real incomes fall for the lower 80 percent of the population, the more people need to go into debt to survive, but we all know that is a dead end. We have to face the truth, that our economy is bankrupt, that the policy of trading production for debt has been a disaster, and that we must take our medicine. "Hi, my name is J.P. Morgan Chase, and I'm a debt addict."

If we continue down this slippery bailout slope, the result will be far different than the spin doctors promise. This ain't the yellow brick road, it's the path to Hell. What is waiting right around the corner is hyperinflation, and the complete disintegration of the global financial system, the global economy, and the United States. This is a nation-killing plan which will lead the world into economic collapse and a new Dark Age, as civilization itself crumbles. It must be stopped.

The response from the American people played a crucial role in defeating the bailout bill on the first vote, and now is the time to escalate. Bury your elected officials, especially your Congressmen, in a blizzard of demands that the bailout be stopped--out-pressure the bankers, and the whores of the Congressional leadership and the Bush Administration. We need to bury this once and for all.

But stopping the bailout is just the first step. Dramatic action is indeed required, and that starts with the honest admission that the system is finished, and that it must be put through bankruptcy reorganization. The debt junkies must go cold turkey. Lyndon LaRouche has laid out the plan for a real recovery, and we must first admit to ourselves that it is necessary, and then demand that our political leaders implement it. This is a time for courage, and action.

http://www.larouchepac.com/

I just posted this on another thread, so sorry if it's not totally relevant but maybe it supports sleeper's point that with better leadership the populism could have some legs:

Guys, I'm concerned about the sneery attitude toward populism. People are pissed that those having the "rescue" discussion are ignoring the ordinary homeowners--read voters--whose lousy mortgages are at the root of the problem, and their neighbors, whose home values and neighborhoods are tanking along with them.

(It is worth noting that in the view of most Americans--read voters--their wealth lies in their home, not their investments. So when it comes time for making choices, most ordinary people would rather see the market collapse than their housing/personal finances go tits up. I'm not saying this is fiscally correct, just noting the perception.)

In this new special interest world, peoples' votes only matter in the 8 weeks or so before an election. We are in that 8 weeks. The first presidential candidate who puts out a credible-sounding plan to deal with the mortgage crisis (not the credit crisis) will win the election. Every day that goes by in which Obama makes vague noises instead of laying out specifics is a day for "Maverick McCain" to seize.

Please don't let your disdain for newly populist Republicans get in the way of understanding that Americans want the problem solved at its root, not its ugly flower.

The bailout bill isn't about freedom, or fascism, or socialism, or Lenin, or Mussolini, or anything else you're talking about. It's even only marginally about economics, per se.

It's really about interrelated systems and preventing systems failure.

I'm not generally a technocrat but this is in fact a technical issue and populism isn't the immediate answer.

With all due respect to Dennis Kucinich (and I have a lot of respect for him), he doesn't know squat about financial markets.

In response to OhioGuy and some others here, I think the problem is that Henry Paulson and his Wall Street colleagues don't know any more than Dennis Kucinich about how to keep financial markets viable -- unless, of course, their purpose has always been to destroy them when they couldn't impoverish the rest of us to sustain them.

URGENT ACTION NEEDED
Sen Maj Leader Harry Reed is planning on bringing back the inadequate give away that was defeated in the house. It’s going to be voted on Wednesday. He needs to be told by email, fax, phone that it is not good enough. his contact info is:
528 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3542
Fax: 202-224-7327
Toll Free for Nevadans:
1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343)

The core concept proposed by Bush is flawed. Call some hearings and ask some economists. Google Sweden 1992 banking crisis. They had good success promptly steering their financial institutions back to safety. Learn the lessons, write it for the Democratic base, and own it. The “compromise” tweeking that was done to the Bush proposal resulted in a toothless and weak 100 page bill that tried to bury and hide its weakness from the voters. Rather than condescendingly claiming that the American people didn’t understand (Cf, McSame of Obama at first debate), or that the leadership didn’t explain it well enough, the reality is that public outrage finally made the Republicans blink, to borrow from Palin. If they vote in favor of bailing out the bad actors, they lose votes from constituents in five weeks at the next election. That is their only moral hazard. The bill that failed would not have prevented one of the 10K daily foreclosures, could have been filibustered until Bush spent all $700B, would only have made some parachutes non-tax-deductible, merely required a report “suggesting” how the taxpayer will be paid back, and allowed the same bunch of lobbyists to set prices for their trash that the taxpayers would pay. As a final insult, instead of providing more confidence through transparency, the failed bill would allow Paulson (like Enron did) to suspend the mark-to-market rule. This is intellectual dishonesty that will further erode confidence in our banking system. Do a better job on all these issues and allow bankruptcy judges to implement the rewriting of loans, or face the wrath of the voters. I think many voters would accept a temporary governmental equity position in the banking sector as long as the bad guys aren’t seen as maintaining their ability to subvert the programs and continue to rip off the system. Don’t pull another FISA cave.

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd

It grieves me to say this of the learned gentleman from Cambridge, let alone Chris "I will filibuster FISA till Jimmy Stewart rises from the dead" Dodd, but the very same Ellen with whom you recently exchanged pleasantries favored us at some time in the past with a very depressing precis of just what the going rate is these days for buying an amendment of the Bankruptcy Code.

I haven't seen this point brought up, so untill they bail Wall St. out I'll say this: the p-resident and his cronies can give billions so that Iraqi's can be killed and their oil stolen, but cannot bail out the banks etc. for the People they Represent. I'm a Canadian and usually do not buy American items. I'll only buy them if they are made by small family businesses or single people. I'm thinking when I buy goods from these people that helps them, even if a bit of what I buy goes to Bush's/etc. pocket.

"Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street?"

Because reducing debt isn't the goal. Injecting some liquidity into frozen capital markets is. Banks won't lend each other money. That's what this is all about. This nonsense about "bailing out Wall Street" completely misses the point that NO ONE is talking about bailing out Wall Street. What Congress is trying to do is rescue a failing financial industry. Allowing banks to fail is not an option.