The Great Depression Part II Options

[fameONE]

Is another Great Depression right around the corner for the American economy? Considering two investment bank powerhouses (Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs)have become bank holding companies in order for a financial backing from the Federal Reserve (this is a really big deal), should we be concerned? Also, take into consideration Bush's bailouts and his $700 billion dollar plan to 'save the banks,' do you think we're in deep shit?

Debate.

[mipadi]

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).