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Refresh Tag(s): AIG; Bailout; Bank Failure; Bank Failures; Banking Crisis; Bankruptcy; Bear Stearns; Ben Bernanke; Corruption; Cronyism; (more...) Finance; Finance-Banking; Henry Paulson; US Treasury Bankrupt (less...)
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September 20, 2008 at 14:41:42

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Promoted to Headline (H2) on 9/20/08:
THROW Them Out Don't Bail Them Out

by Dave Johnson Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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Everything I have read about this massive bailout proposal sounds like they're going to try to treat the symptoms of a sick and failed system instead of the causes and instead of reforming or replacing the failed system itself. Nothing I have heard addresses the CAUSES of the problems!

I say THROW the system out and start building one that WORKS for US, don't bail the failed, corrupt system out. A bailout just keeps in place a bad system that has bankrupted all of us in order to enrich a very, very few.

Example: The CAUSE of this was corporate corruption of our political system. The deregulation, bankruptcy bill, oil company favoritism, "free" trade agreements that caused massive trade and job deficits, cronyism, etc. happened because corporate money was used to buy the political system. SO a bailout should prohibit ANY use of corporate funds to influence the political system in ANY way. This includes giving money to organizations like Heritage Foundation, Cato, CEI, DLC and the hundreds of other corporate front groups that influence our politics and our thinking.

Example: Why bail out the very people who caused this mess? Any company receiving a dime of bailout money from the taxpayers should agree to certain terms that benefit the taxpayers. Their taxes on any profits should be doubled or tripled for ten or twenty years. Their management should not be allowed to receive pay that is above ten times the American average. They should agree to start retrofitting their companies to be carbon-neutral. I can think of a hundred other things they should have to agree to.

Example: Lots of people have run up debt and can't pay their credit card bills because wages have not been going up, jobs are being outsourced, etc., while a few people at the very top of the system are getting vast, vast income and wealth out of the current system. SO reforming the system and imposing very high taxes of 90% or more on high incomes above, maybe $2 million, and using this money FOR THE PEOPLE should be a part of a bailout. These high taxes remove the INCENTIVE to lie, cheat and steal. They remove the reason a few people have been gaming the system. And with a 90% top tax rate hedge fund managers would STILL bring in $300 million a year. Think about that.

Example: Lots of people can't pay their mortgages and credit card bills because of health care costs. Completely reforming the health care system to provide everyone with health care would cost VASTLY less than this trillion-dollar bailout. SO a national health care system should be ONE component of a bailout.

These are just a few ideas for approaching any bailout. I have more. ALL of us would have many, many more if we get the time to think about it. And THIS is why they are trying to force this to happen immediately - THIS WEEK. If we get a chance to take a breather and think about what we're doing -- giving them all the rest of the money the country has -- we might have time to see a better way to proceed. They DON'T want that.

http://seeingtheforest.com

Dave Johnson is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream working on progressive messaging, and a Fellow at the Commonweal Institute, where he researches and writes about the activities of the conservative movement (more...)

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4 comments

Matoska

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The current financial crisis stemmed from low interest rates and a housing
market that continued to inflate beyond their true values. Supporting a $600 billion dollar bailout will continue to artificially pump up what is
fundamentally "unsound" about the US economy and continue to increase the deficit, devalue the dollar and result in less spending power for the American people.

The Rock is the cost of a bailout. The hardplace is the realization of the overvalued assets and the need for investors to get out. Either the market gets "corrected" by a comprehensive review and audit of assets or the Sword of Damocles will continue to hang over all of us.

by Matoska (22 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 33 comments) on Saturday, Sep 20, 2008 at 4:54:38 PM

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steve scheetz

You haven't heard much about the causes BECAUSE

the root cause is more complicated than you have been lead to believe, and quite a number of people are actually responsible.

1. Deregulation with a safety net is NOT deregulation

2. People have been complaining about how not enough people are "allowed" to be home owners, consequently, banks, lending institutions, and politicians were pressured to do something about that.

3. Banks, in order to make this happen DEMANDED that there be a safety net, just in case, AND these same lending institutions were demanding that regulations be lifted so that they COULD provide loans for people.

4. Corrupt CEO's took advantage of this, and received compensation on corporate earnings, ASSUMING people paid their loans back. Loans that were structured to allow people who had very little income to afford payments on half million dollar homes... This caused the housing market to inflate artificially due to the fact that money was so unbelievably cheap.

5. CEO's knowing that this house of cards would eventually crash wound up crawling out further and further on that limb, paying lobbyists to pay off politicians to keep the regulations exactly the way they were for as long as possible, and it was work, because there were many politicians who were saying "HEY, SOMETHING SMELLS BAD HERE" though not enough, and definitely not LOUD enough to be heard over the sound of the NASCAR race in the background....

Now we are in this bad situation, and some of us want to hire a politician who received more money in his short time in congress than any other politician, save one, in 20 YEARS... That is right, more money in a year than all politicians were given during the past 20 years, with only one exception, and he had been in Congress forever!

This same politician has, as his ECONOMIC advisor, one of the culprits involved in the Fannie Mae CRASH... That is the person who is going to set America right, financially? Please tell me that is a joke, because I really need to laugh right now...

Ciao, CZ

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 829 comments [52 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 20, 2008 at 5:44:56 PM

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Lord Stirling

Good Article

Good article. The trouble is the elected lawmakers, that we the people keep re-electing, are close to 100% bought and paid for by the corrupt masters of the political and economic system. Too many people are so uneducated about what is happening in their world that they support the very people destroying the nation, the world, and our very future.

Stirling

by Lord Stirling (26 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 151 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 11:06:13 AM

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Margaret Bassett

I am amazed, and encouraged, by OEN response

Rob Kall headlined it for us. Now comes the trickier part. If we stomp our feet, say "nyet" and.......? There are so-called uprisings in other parts of the world, too. Bolivia, Pakistan, the usual African issues, and somewhere there is something going on even in Italy, I read.

So here we sit, stand, hide, yell, whatever, in the good old US of A! What do we wear? Red like the Burmese monks? Orange like former satellites of Russia? Or do we flap our lips and worry about black and white striped suits? I've been E-musing long enough to suspect that thousands of exact, perfect solutions will arise and die like a motherboard crash.

Seriously, where do we find alternative leadership? That should mean looking for people on our side, even those who hold public office or write for established media outlets.

by Margaret Bassett (45 articles, 2909 quicklinks, 43 diaries, 1853 comments [99 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 11:44:06 AM

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