@ Economy Options

[sixfive]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/finance...-collapses.html

[dannyordinary]

This is very confusing indeed. How did it all get to this ?
And I hope they fix it .. why does it always need to be "something"
with this country .. lets go back to the Bill days .

[brooklyneast05]

what do you think should happen steven, do you think there needs to be a bail out or no? just curious.


i don't even really know what i think 100% really. i just think it's bullshit that we're even in this position to begin with.

[dannyordinary]

what do you think should happen steven, do you think there needs to be a bail out or no? just curious.
i don't even really know what i think 100% really. i just think it's bullshit that we're even in this position to begin with.

I agree. I mean, why would the most (soon to be least) powerful country in the world let itself get into that position?

[brooklyneast05]

soon to be least?


uhhhh no, we aren't even close to soon to be least powerful country.

[dannyordinary]

soon to be least?
uhhhh no, we aren't even close to soon to be least powerful country.

Well the way it's going ..

OK, maybe i exaggerated. If we go down though, a lot of other country who depend on us go down, causing global failure.

It could get ugly.

[mipadi]

(I posted this in the Debate forum several days ago, but, you know, no one actually bothers to go in there, so I'll repost here.)

The $700 billion bailout plan is a joke. It's just a way to protect the wealthiest individuals and corporations. To quote Dennis Kucinich:

The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.

Bernie Sanders has proposed a 5-year, 10% surtax on couples earning over $1 million a year, or individuals earning over $500,000. His logic is that, under Bush, the wealthy have benefited greatly, so it's their turn to step up and help us out of the mess they helped to create.

I'm not sure I completely agree, but it doesn't seem like a bad idea, either. I definitely don't agree with the bailout. On the surface, it seems that in the short-term, it's beneficial to everyone to "save" our financial institutions -- if the economy goes south, we all lose. But Ron Paul has pointed out why saving the banks isn't a viable long-term solution:

Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.

The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market. Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum.

You should read all the above links. Kucinich, Sanders, and Paul are some of the few politicians who don't have their heads up their asses (or up the asses of corporate America).

[penispumper]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul481.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/steelman5.html

mipadi makes a good point. makes me wanna pump my penis. I don't agree with Bernie Sanders' proposal though.

We're never going to see that $700 million again. The bailout is stupid.

[mipadi]

From The New York Times:

Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.

Remember the mantra of the conservatives: "Their profits are theirs, their losses are ours."

[sixfive]

I think the bailout is stupid, but I also think it's stupid to sit around and do nothing. I don't know what they should do, but arguing and worrying about pride isn't doing our country any good.

[brooklyneast05]

this is annoying right now, the legislation failed but right now they (democrats & republicans) are all sitting around pointing fingers about why nothing has passed.

[brooklyneast05]

Dow down 778, worst point drop ever, after the House rejects the $700 billion bank bailout plan.

[shanaynay]

[brooklyneast05]

^ok, how insightful into our economy you are.

[synatribe]

this is annoying right now, the legislation failed but right now they (democrats & republicans) are all sitting around pointing fingers about why nothing has passed.

well techinically the democrats said that they arent going to pass the bill unless a certain number of republicans voted for it also, but republicans told democrats that they were going for the vote, but today the republicans who supposedly were going to pass the bill didnt even show up, so they sort of backstabbed making the bill a failure, its funny though cause president bush proposed this too, but then again if this bill was passed then the republicans will be going against their beliefs of free markets
I think Obama might get a lead from this cause the republicans made a huge mistake