What follows is an email from Del. Bob Marshall on the financial bailout.
If you received a call from a stranger who demanded that you pay his bar bill and bookie or he would ruin your family’s finances, you wouldn’t reach for your wallet.
But Congress is ready to reach for our wallets at the behest of President Bush and Wall Street lobbyists who threaten us with a 1932 style Depression if they do not get $700 billion for the debts of Wall Street gamblers and financial inebriates!
If private investors won’t buy Wall Street’s disputed assets, why should Congress force us to pay? The US Treasury wants $700 billion to buy bad loans at above market prices, and then auction them off for maybe cents on the dollar to the same Wall Street gangs causing this mess!
Bush wants to give former Goldman Sachs CEO and current Treasury Secretary Paulson powers equal to a one man economic dictatorship: “Decisions by the Secretary … may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
This grand larceny, done while the FBI investigates the very companies Congress wants to bailout, will increase Wall Street’s financial philandering, not end it. A depression is more likely with Congress so generously rewarding bad behavior, rather than letting those who take risks, pay for the risks.
The $300 billion already given away in 2008 stimulus packages, bailouts and “loans” for investment banks, Detroit auto makers, mortgage giants, and insurance companies was supposed to fix the economy. Giving candy to one child doesn’t work.
Adding $1 to $2 Trillion to the national debt over 6 months when the federal budget and trade balance deficits are hundreds of billions in the red will increase inflation and decrease the purchasing power of our paychecks and savings.
Congress should stand up to extortionists, not pay them.
I would follow Bob Marshall to the gates of hell but he is wrong on this one. Our country could not survive a credit crunch without immediate catastrophic results. That is why they are rushing to get this done by Monday.
Joe Budzinski – We are trusting the same people who created this mess to fix it. They want to spend 700 billion dollars BEFORE they tell us how they are going to fix the problems that led to the financial mess in the first place.
The Democrats still will not admit that they socialized the lending industry and insisted upon giving people with bad credit loans. The Republican leadership still will not admit that they did not squawk loud enough to draw attention to the problem. Even now when the Democrats are blaming them, the Republican leadership will not call the Democrats to account. They seem to be too afraid they will not get their precious 700 billion.
When what they want to do is not even Constitutional, what is the point of giving these people more money and power? The long run fix is to put the lending industry back in the free market. That is what Congress should be debating. That is the fix we need to demand.
YEAH, BOB! You go! Keep telling these criminals where THEY should go!
Tom, Socialized Lending? PREDATORY lending is more like it, predatory lending with no government oversight, regulations, or ethics. DISGUSTING. These jerks have enough money collectively to put THEMSELVES back into the “free market.” Why should we have to pay for it AGAIN?
Where’s Keith Fimian? Keith, arrest these people!!!!
Okay, so I’m ranting a little, but on this issue, I think ranting is a reasonable response.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t follow ANYONE to the gates of hell. I don’t trust anyone leading me to hell instead of heaven.