Monday, September 22, 2008

Housecleaning


Periodically we all need to do a thorough house cleaning. We need to sweep down the cobwebs, wipe up the dust and mop the floors. No matter how special we think we are in this life, there are just some dirty jobs that need to get done - or the problem grows, mold begins to form and we all get sick.

The bailout of the American financial institutions may be the wrong move at the wrong time. We're covering up the problem without doing the housecleaning that needs to be done. Greedy SOB's will be rewarded for their bad economic behavior and the problem is swept under the rug until the dirt (mold) shows up in some other part of the house.

Is it the right move to bail out the big investment houses at taxpayer expense? I don't know - but it seems to me like the alternative should be given some consideration...

From Alternet.. Click on the link to read the whole article.

Wall Street Is Licking Its Chops at the Bush Team's Multi-Hundred Billion Dollar Giveaway Plan

By William Greider, TheNation.com. Posted September 21, 2008.


If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public.

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: Dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses -- many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public -- all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics -- exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

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