Why the Bailout Infuriates Voters
For the past several weeks voters were told by the White House, the so-called leadership of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and numerous pundits on the airwaves that America faced utter economic collapse unless a $700 billion bailout plan conceived by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was approved immediately. Skeptics of both the “crisis” and the purported “fix” were denounced for not understanding the economic turmoil that would flow from delay of even a few more days.
Two weeks ago we were told that failure to pass the proposed legislative “blank check” over the weekend would cause a one-third decline in the stock market come Monday morning. Nothing passed. The market slipped down, but not nearly as much as the “experts” had predicted. And when the bailout plan was rejected by the House the stock market actually went up! In fact, once the legislation was finally forced through Congress later in the week the market reacted with an even more dramatic decline than met the rejection of the original planned bailout. I guess we now know not to rely on the geniuses in Washington when it comes to “playing the market.” (Although some of them do have an impressive track record of results in the arena of cattle futures and the use of “insider information” to produce profits.)
The bailout plan ultimately approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush is scant on details and doesn’t actually address the fact that the fiscal mess was created in large part by government rules and regulations that directed banks and lending institutions to loan huge sums of money to people who had no proven capacity to pay it back. Needless to say, the failure to deal with the problem while throwing tons of other people’s money into this bailout scheme has produced some outrage from those “other people” — the taxpayers!
Dead on… as far as you go with it.
I hate that the malefactors will not get censured. They won’t lose their finance committee seats. Paulsin won’t get slapped for clearly being biased in favor of his old firm, Goldman Sachs. I hate that, despite this mess, few seats will change occupants this election that weren’t going to change occupants anyway. Those that do change will llikely be undeserving of change.
I don’t fault the Pubs for getting some things passed. They’re in the minority. You gotta make hay while the sun shines. Most of their goodies were tax cuts and some rule changes in mark-to-market. Some of the problem did get corrected because of them. Sadly, the Dems managed to hang this on them, because they have no leadership.
I want to see at least a 50% turnover in the House and Senate seats being elected this year. I want some danged heads to roll! Actually, I want to see some literal hangings from the town square. You could get huge money from the advertising rights.
I think you have it backwards; although I agree with your conclusions.
The Senate took a Sweetners bill that had already passed the House and attached the Bailout to it.
After the House killed their version of the Bailout, the Senate would have to wait for them to try again as all bills dealing the moneys have to originate in the House.
By adding the Bailout to a bill already in circulation (since Senate and House have to agree on the final bill) the Senate need not wait for the House to try again on a specific bailout package.
Here’s the short version:
The government is stealing our money, and giving it to their buddies in the banking biz, and not only that, but they’re telling us it’s for our own good.
This tends to irritate folks who aren’t in the banking biz.
And why hasn’t there been a skeptical voice in the mainstream media to loudly warn the public that we were being fleeced. The MSM has become nothing but a propaganda ministry for liberal/socialistic politics . Even the financial experts are so deeply involved in the hoax that they work full time to deceive and misinform the public.
It is the greatest national crime and it was brought to us our own government and elected representatives.
Yeah that new Democrat controlled Congress deserves to be re elected with a much larger majority.
It will be akin to national suicide.
Obama and he Dems want even more government involvement. Great. Just great.
It could well be that for lack of any decent leadership choices, we are screwed for the next 4 years and perhaps beyond.
A poster for another article on PajamasMedia suggested googling the following:
Barack Obama Cloward-Piven ACORN
I did. I read the “American Thinker” article and it contains an interesting perspective about this entire bailout thing. Stuff I hadn’t even thought about.
Also, it discusses the connections between Obama, the bailout and the radical left wing of our country. (It also has stuff about Ayers and Acorn.)
If you’re interested, read it. But I have to warn you that it will make you even more worried about the possibility of Obama being elected President.
This isn’t really a partisan issue, although the democrats are up to their necks in it (as usual) and they aren’t getting any of the blame for it (also as usual). While the article touches on the causes of the problem, it mainly centers on the federal solution to the problem, so i’ll limit myself to discussing that. Both parties should share the shame of this bill. Most of us don’t understand that the Senate did a little slight of hand by adding the bailout to an existing bill. All we see is a bailout filled with pork. It’s disgusting to us how the congress could do this to us AGAIN. I’m sure if there was a “flush congress and start over” option on out ballots, people would opt for it.
I’m just going to start voting out the incumbents, from whatever party their from. We can’t afford any more of these bozos living in Washington forever. Term limits for Congress is a must.
I know someone whose home was foreclosed. He is a day-trader and gambler. Shall we call him a risk-taker? If he lost money gambling, would he be bailed out? The incredible answer is yes, to some degree. The generous Congress has long allowed gambling losses to be deducted from gambling winnings. Likewise day-trading losses. “Investing”, both activities, sort of. Now our “mainstream” Congress and McCain seem to want to pay him off for losing his over-mortgaged home. After all McCain is a member of our great Congress, is he not. As Pelosi says, take the risk out of risk-taking. That’s what government is for. What an undivine comedy.
Why should we bail out Wall Street when there are Sovereign Wealth Funds like the United Arab Emirates, China or Russia that would do it for us?
Here is the link to the article that Therese mentioned. It shows that Obama has been immersed in radical Marxist philosophy his entire adult life, and the doesn’t even consider that his father was a communist, and his mentor for his teenage years, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card carrying member of the Communist party:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
Note also the title “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis”. Just how much of a coincidence do you really think it is that this “crisis” hit 7 weeks before the election?
Frank, Dodd, Paulson, and many others must have known this was inevitable for at least six months. Why did it hit so conveniently for Obama?
I believe it is the mother of all October surprises, held up by the key players until they felt it was necessary to spring it, and it happened just a week after Palin put a crimp in The One’s coronation plans. I’ll jump on the looney “Moon Landing Hoax” before I believe that the timing was just an accident.
Without this “crisis”, Obama would be toast now.
I have googled without success to find out why this hit exactly when it did. It would be interesting to research this angle, no?
Most people I talk to know that bad loans to unworthy creditors caused the problem. HUD said yesterday that there are about 5 million fraudulent loans to illegal aliens outstanding. Now we know what AMNESTY was all about.
This is not a ‘bailout’: it is an extortion racket to rob those who are successful and reward those who have caused problems.
Bailing out Fannie and Freddie will bailout two of its main backers: China and Russia. They have hundreds of billions to lose if those organizations evaporated. Delinquent mortgages are the scam to get people to tax the system so the taxpayer ends up paying out to keep it going.
No one has put forward removing Fannie, Freddie and AIG from bailouts and forcing them to operate in the shark-filled waters of commercial finance without shark repellant. They are fat, dumb, happy and have the exact, same legislation backing them today as they had before the bailout. Congress isn’t interested in ‘fixing the problem’ but in saving their hides and ensuring that outsiders get their investments covered. The American taxpayer then ends up paying for someone else’s ill decisions and ill made investments. China and Russia should have executed due oversight so as not to invest in such institutions in the first place. Loan officers and those seeking such loans should have stuck to regular and accountable practices.
None of them did so.
That was encouraged by Congress with backing from Freddie and Fannie lobbyists.
This is not a bailout.
It is a shakedown.
The first of many.
“And it is why we should be disgusted with the whole bunch.”
I’m beyond disgusted.
I. Want. Them. Gone.
And forget about waiting for elections to roll around. Dogs only learn not to crap on the rug if you take the rolled-up newspaper to them right after they do it. It’s time for a nationwide recall of everyone who voted for this travesty, no matter what letter is after the name.
The more pertinent question is, if things had gone differently, and this person had made a tidy profit from flipping, would he share that profit with all of us? To the extent that it would be capital gains, yes, but that isn’t as big a percentage as the typical loss that a bank (or homeowner) is going to see on a foreclosure.
Arguably, this is the price that we pay for the huge windfalls that the Federal and local governments received all through the middle of the decade. The governments went on a bender, and we get stuck with the hangover.
“This is not a bailout.
It is a shakedown.” That’s why the bill didn’t pass the first time.
I don’t think the final bill needed sweeteners to pass. I believe those first round no votes were principled, they felt they were bamboozled into voting for something they didn’t understand and had no time to ponder. After Dow’s 700 points drop, sensing that the bill in whatever forms would pass, the piranhas moved in to make a killing. The piranhas were mostly from the Senate who hid behind the House votes.
The Porkbusters should zero in which districts profited and if those were districts whose representatives changed their votes.
The bill passed, Dow dropped 500 pts, 800 pts, 500 pts….
Before all this blew up, the D——–c Congress’ approval was 9% or so.
I wonder what it is now?
Too bad the polling software is using unsigned integers or we might even see a negative rating. In fact, if we should see a sudden, unexplainable jump in the rating, that would be a good sign of numerical rollover. ;=)
The numbers have gone up… to 17%. Someone ‘splain to me why. I think it’s because the Dems have been successful at pinning it on the Pubs, and Bush in particular.
The problem is not that poor people bought houses. The problem is that mortgage companies, banks, real estate agents, appraisers–all were in collusion to make sure the mortgage was approved even if it meant “fixing” the forms and despite knowing the buyer couldn’t pay when the ARM adjusted upwards. Then the effing financial institutions sliced and diced the mortgages, repackaged them and created new financial instruments, colluded with the rating companies who said these things were okay, and colluded with insurance companies to cover what they were doing. The idea was that they all got fees each time the pieces of paper changed hands. And since the houses kept going up in value, they thought they could keep the Ponzi scheme going. But then house prices tanked and the market realized they had bought securities that were impossible to value. Now no one trusts anyone else. And since our moronic Congress was stampeded by the Fed into throwing good money after bad–but not for rescuing people who are losing their homes–we will continue to circle the drain. We are in a recession and we probably are going into a depression. You can thank the Fed, the SEC, and Congress (not to mention Bush and his rich friends).
You buy a house you know you can’t afford at lose it, it’s your own fault period! When people started treating the house they lived in as an investment instead of a home things went in the crapper.
Thursday the DOW closed at 8579 which is 60% below where it stood 1 year ago. The plunge is directly related to the collapse of the housing bubble caused by the policies of our illustrious leaders in the Government who in their infinite wisdom decided to coerce lending institutions to make Politically Correct loans to borrower who had no hope of paying them off. When the “Chickens came home to roost,” as Obama’s former reverend so succinctly put it, they tried to arrange a $700 billion bailout. Having failed in that effort they went back to work and raised that figure by adding $150 billion of pure pork, subsidizing wooden arrows comes to mind, and the $850 billion bill passed with flying colors. The effect on the markets however has not been, shall we say, as predicted?
Several times since 1991 I have, in letters to the editor and elsewhere, asked voters to join me in voting those who have brought this disaster upon us out of office. In each subsequent election they have been returned to office; we are now reaping what we have sown. The full force of these ill-conceived policies instituted by Democrats in the Carter and Clinton Administrations and tolerated by Republicans when they controlled both houses of the Congress, have now devastated financial institutions world wide. While this was going on these same politicians have received millions in campaign contributions from those institutions which they failed to properly regulate.
This morning I awoke to the headline “Congress Mulls Major 401K Changes.” I would suggest that if you are fortunate enough to have anything left in your 401K that you hide it immediately because they are coming after it.
Have you had enough?
Congress has always been corrupt – but they have become increasingly brazen about attaching bribe funding programs to every bill they pass.
I’d vote for anybody that would offer to banish, upon pain of death, 535 congress critters.