I Think I May Stay Home in November.
It’s essentially a Wall Street giveaway plan, with only some fig leaves to try and pretend that it isn’t.
Why? Because the language about taking warrants in exchange for buying up toxic assets is only for direct purchases and not for reverse auction puchases, which will be the majority of the purchases. As Soros points out, in any reverse auction, the government will get stuck with the most toxic of toxic waste because of information asymetries. In exchange they should at least get stock, equal not to what they paid, but to the face of the crap they are buying.
There is quite a bit of language about helping mortgage holders, but it is almost all qualified with words like encourage and request, rather than require. Since the Treasury is bailing mortgage holders out, the idea that the Secretary must “encourage” and “request” is just BS. The correct response is to make help for mortgage holders a requirement of participating in the program at all. If financial institutions don’t like that they don’t need to participate. Good way to make sure that companies that don’t really need help don’t swill at the trough.
Unlike the Dodd bill, this is not a copy of the actual language of the bill, but a summary gloss. Without seeing the language we don’t know what’s actually in there. Dodd was straight up with us. Frank is hiding his legislative language. Why?
I always thought Barney Frank was one of the good guys. Instead, he’s a selfish ASSHOLE who cares more about Wall Street than Main Street.
Dday:
That’s really the only way out of this right now. That $700 billion dollar price tag defunds even the most mildly progressive agenda. I think John McCain may have lost the election today, and at the hands of David Letterman, no less. But with the federal treasury raided and in the hands of Wall Street corporations who made bad decisions, it’s hard to see how a President Obama can be anything but a fixer-upper and a caretaker. All because everyone bought the crisis frame so hard.
Gee, what a surprise: the Democrats kneecap their own party as the prepare to take over the reins.
Goodbye, health care.
Goodbye, infrastructure repair.
Goodbye, educational reforms.
Goodbye, alternative energy.
Goodbye, new jobs.
Yesterday, i saw Michelle Obama in Southwest Philadelphia, where she said (I’m paraphrasing) “You’ve been made all sorts of promises before that never came true. THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT..” If this bailout passes, there is a much better than average chance that I will be staying home on election day or voting thrid parties all the way, because it seems to me like the Democrats would prefer to reward their friends on Wall Street rather than look after ordinary Americans. $700,000,000,000.00 in taxpayer funds handed over to the Secretary oif the Treasury who leaves in 3 months? That’s fucking INSANE.
Frankly, I think the cynics in the GOP may be our only hope: vote no on this bill, Senators! Vote NO!
