These are the people running our government, folks.
From the infamous, America-hating commie rag Forbes.com —
"In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
‘It’s not based on any particular data point,’ a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. ‘We just wanted to choose a really large number.’"
Mission accomplished! That, keep in mind, is a Treasury spokeswoman. That’s not a leak, that’s not someone talking out of school, that’s an actual message to the press from a Treasury spokeswoman, speaking in full knowledge that she was talking to a national publication. If that’s their actual message they want people to know, then who knows what’s really going on with these people?
So forgive me if I don’t buy the administration’s line on the necessity of this bailout.
The rational part of my mind keeps trying to insist that must be from an Onion article.
I know — when I read it at Kos, I thought “no, wait, that has to be out of context,” I had to go read the Forbes article. But no, there is, seemingly, no limit to this administration’s greed and contempt for its citizens.
Okay, my brain is a little more gathered now. I’m going to say this:
1) Bush needs to be impeached immediately. I don’t care if he’s on the way out the door. We need this man before a tribunal before he can slip off our radar.
2) Every Bush-appointed member of his cabinet needs to be up there right along-side him.
3) We need to no longer listen to the two men that called for this action. They clearly are not thinking correctly. This is ludicrous.
The time for action is now. I say we impeach Bush before the weekend. I think we can have him and Cheney out of office by Monday.
It actually makes sense to me, though I wouldn’t have said it that way. The goal of the bailout bill is to accomplish a particular task. If the treasury decided to be conservative and only ask for $300 billion (!), but then it turned out that they needed an extra $100 billion to avert a meltdown, it would all have been for nothing. Better to authorize all the money they might need. The problem is the lack of oversight, explanation, and consequences, not the request for a large sum per se.
Nuh-uh. Those are problems too, but there is also a problem with this being “not based on any particular data point.” If they calculated they could probably do it with $600 billion, then decided to ask for a bit extra to be sure . . . well, I’d still be ticked at them for wastefulness, but that would be better than the admission that they basically threw a dart at a board full of numbers that sounded good.
The problem is not the request for a large sum per se; the problem is that they didn’t think this through. And they want us to give them $700 billion for a half-cocked plan.
I’m convinced that the “really large number” was created not to serve any fucked-up idea of a bailout attempt, but merely to hamstring whichever president comes after Bush. If $700 billion dollars (actually $1.8 trillion dollars) gets tied up in the Bush Bailout Bill, whoever is president next won’t be able to spend anything on social programs or anything else. Not to mention, Bush needs that $700 billion in the hands of the banks now, or else they won’t be able to pay him his kickbacks when he gets out of office.
As I said earlier, it’s nothing but theft in broad daylight, on an unimaginable scale.
Yes, that’s true. “We asked for as much money as we could possibly need” is one thing, but “we didn’t even try to figure out what the ceiling was” shows some disrespect to Americans who might have other things to do with their money than bail out Wall Street.
It seemed clear from the beginning that the whole thing was bogus. Treasury pulled that $700 billion out of the air and imposed a meaningless deadline just to get the negotiations started. If Congress was stupid enough to roll over and give it to them, so much the better, went the reasoning. The fact that Paulson had no idea what he was going to do with the money was evident in the proposed legislation, which essentially said, “Give us the money and then we’ll figure out how to spend it.”
Oh, and now Bush and his gang of thieves are going to try to use this mess as a way to cancel the election in November. This debate-canceling brouhaha is just the beginning.
–Ed.
Thankfully, no one seems to be falling for this line of bull. (I only yesterday found out that Henry Paulson used to be the head of Goldman Sachs. See, if he were a journalist, this would be known as a “conflict of interest.” Funny about that.) Both Republicans and Democrats are in revolt, and word is they’re working on a smaller bill that limits the scope of the bailout, includes oversight, and imposes limits on investment bank CEOs’ pay. That may not be ideal, but at least we haven’t let Georgie and the gang fool us twice.
Oh, Dubya. Do you really think that old “the country is in imminent danger” gag will work again? I think 9/11 and Katrina proved that you couldn’t spot imminent danger with a map, a flashlight, a large blinking neon sign, and a national security briefing headlined “Imminent Danger Determined to Strike U.S.”
And hey, why aren’t we all laughing at John McCain’s bizarre, desperate, petulant attempt to call a time-out now that his campaign is in the toilet?
— N.A.
Yeah, Just saw a clip from Bush’s address last night. I particularly like the If you don’t give us da money, banks might fail. Banks in your community might fail! (paraphrased)
the new math
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Re: the new math
In the movie Igor, there’s a moment where the Bush-figure king announces, Dr. Evil-like, that he’s about to hold the world ransom for ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!! and all I could think was “oh, how innocent this movie is.”
Re: the new math
The particular number doesn’t matter because I’m sure Treasury only sees it as a starting point. They can always come back for more money later (and I’m sure they will). After all, wasn’t the Bear Stearns deal back in March supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening?
As for Bush, I am 100% against bailing out any failing business, anywhere, anytime. But do you really think President Obama would have done anything very differently had this “crisis” occurred a year from now?
Do you think any American president in this day and age is going to sit in the Oval Office and say, “Well, folks, we’re going to let the free market do its job and we’re going to have a little recession which will blow over in a year or two”?
Re: the new math
Letting the free market do its job when it’s based on credit, and at a point where true value’s been grossly overestimated, means an inevitable and debilitating market correction. Not just a recession that will blow over in a year or two. Unabated, that will translate into more foreclosures, massive bank failures, stock market plummeting, unemployment and inflation, all with effects that will last quite a while longer than your year or two. The economy grinds to a halt and everyone suffers, not just Wall Street, not just predatory lenders, not just folks who took out crazy loans. Of course every president would step in to prevent that. If any didn’t, we’d call for their head.