no doubt you’ve heard the news about an unrestricted $700,000,000,000 “bailout” for the banking industry. the proposed solution is a blank check for the bankers that does nothing for people who are losing their homes.
ahem. $700 billion is more than the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. are you kidding me or what?
that’s unacceptable to me, and should be unacceptable to every taxpaying american. it includes provisions for bailing out foreign banks — FOREIGN BANKS! — while allowing families to lose their homes and…what, exactly? with the republicans having virtually destroyed our already-fragile social safety net over the past eight years, people in foreclosure will likely not even have the “luxury” of ending up in a shelter, because the shelters are already full. meanwhile, the financiers who actively participated in this collapse (some might even say who caused the collapse, because the were the ones handing out bad loans the way dentists used to hand out lollipops) keep their million dollar bonuses and, even worse, are allowed to continue running the institutions that they have already run into the ground.
i mean, what the fuck? joshua holland lays out quite clearly the ways in which this crisis is a direct result of greed on wall street. and it’s not the first time we’ve been screwed by the manipulations of the bankers in collusion with their political counterparts.
initially, i was not in favor of any kind of a bailout. a lot of people used the mortgage frenzy to finance and flip any number of properties, and did quite well for themselves. if they were left holding some kind of outrageous paper when the music stopped and couldn’t pay the interest, let alone the loan itself, i call it just deserts. but that’s not the whole story. plenty of low- and middle-income families looked at the mortgage givewaway and saw it not for the scam that it was (scam is the right word because the bankers KNEW that it wasn’t sustainable; responsible economists have predicted this collapse for years) but as a way to finally own the home that had, until then, been out of their reach. not to mention GWB harping on and on about the great new ownership society.
it’s those families, ones that were doing okay for themselves in their rented apartments and houses but who yearned for something more and couldn’t make heads or tails out of the fine print on those oh-so-easy-to-get subprime mortgages, that are being destroyed in this crisis. and paulson has the massive balls to propose a huge taxpayer funded bailout that protects the fucking bankers but not the people who got burned?
no. i say, NO! and the democrats are also saying no — thank you for finally growing a pair, nancy pelosi — and we need to join our voices to theirs. paulson is insisting that this is the only way when it is NOT the only way — check out this alternative (and much less expensive) plan from ian welsh and some good ideas from the nation on how we could finance all these rescue missions. you know, a billion here a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money. the government is already in debt, so where’s all that money gonna come from. yeah. you guessed right.
our homework for today is to contact our representatives and TELL THEM THAT WE SAY NO TO THIS PROPOSAL.
after all, it’s our money they’re spending. think about that. it’s equivalent to a couple grand for every man, woman and child in this country. i’m sure you can think of better things the government can do with a couple grand than hand it to wall street.
send your congressman an email (you will need your zip+4 to find them).
please also CALL THEM, and while you’re at it call your senators, and do it today — phone numbers and street addresses for all are here. if you’ve got an extra stamp handy, send them a snailmail as well. it can be as simple as printing out your email and putting it in an envelope.
you can get all this done in about ten minutes. that’s not a lot of time. the future of this country is, quite literally, at stake. if paulson gets the bailout that he’s asking for, it is equivalent to handing the whole treasury to wall street.
and you know how wall street works. they get a $20,000,000 bonus while the town sheriff is throwing your aunt tilly’s furniture into the street.
thought i’d leave you with something incredibly sweet, after all this bile & bad news. thanks to crooks & liars for letting me know about this gorgeous performance by alison crowe.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve noticed for years that car dealers are deep into the subprime market with their loans, although it’s a much smaller situation. Simply put, they offer buyers much higher monthly payments than they can possibly afford; young and gullible buyers think finance companies are doing them a favor. Meanwhile, every contract has language stating that if timely payments aren’t made, the dealer has the right to repossess the vehicle, auction it off at some bargain-basement price, and leave the original buyer with the obligation to pay the difference between the loan amount and the amount reaped at auction. Feh.
I’m not behind any bailout for anyone unless someone is able to distinguish between speculators and American families.
I was also glad Nancy Pelosi stepped up to the plate and the Dems are pushing back on this. We do not need to give a blank check.
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