Don’t let Wall Street create a panic that causes people to push for a Bailout plan. I’ve seen the news pushing that if a plan is not put forward, the sky will fall.
Look, the sky is going to fall anyway. Any bailout is only a bandaid. That $700B has to come from somewhere. It doesn’t come out of thin air. It will have an effect, particularly on the value of the dollar. Trickle down isn’t going to help here (as if it has ever worked). I’d rather see a plan to push UP from the bottom, but what I’d rather see even more is an hoset discussion about what will really happen if there is no bailout, vs. if there is, and not in terms of a day or week, but the longer-term consequences.
All we see is the “something must be done” arguments, the same kind we saw after 911. As if the only option is bill of some sort – if not this bailout, then some bailout is the only option. This is when people make bad decisions, when they assume the choice, when they have pre-selected “solution”. Nobody is talking about “no plan” being a plan. Why is that not on the table? Why is a bailout a fait accompli?
UPDATE: Ralph Nader is one of the few people questioning whether a bailout is actually needed at all:
And also, it’s not clear at all why a bailout is needed. That’s part of the stampede in the pack and the panic that Bush and Paulson and Bernanke are pushing Congress toward. You know, it’s eerily reminiscent, when you listen to Bush yesterday, of how he stampeded the Congress and the country into the criminal war invasion of Iraq in 2003. I mean, look at all his statements: this could do this, this would do that, farms failing, small business, tada, tada. The first question we have to ask as citizens is, why is there a need for a bailout?
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So, the first question Congress should ask in detailed hearings, which aren’t occurring, is simply, why is there need for a bailout? Second is, if there is a need for a bailout, why $700 billion? And third, if there is a need for a bailout, what kind of bailout? Taxpayer equity? So the taxpayer can recover if these companies make a profit, they can recover surplus, perhaps the way they did on the taxpayer bailout in 1979 with Chrysler, where Jimmy Carter demanded that Chrysler issue stock warrants to the Treasury, and Chrysler turned around, and the Treasury sold the warrants for a $400 million profit.I don’t think the Democrats show any nerve that they are going to do anything but cave here. And the statements by Nancy Pelosi are not reassuring, which is, “Well, it’s the Republicans’ bill, you know. Let them take responsibility for it.” That doesn’t work. She’s the Speaker of the House.
Amen to that.
