RANT: I STILL want my pound of flesh...
sliderontheblack.com
Sign this online petition to just say no - to the Wall Street bailout:
nowallstreetbailout.com
Ten Reasons to Oppose the Wall Street Bailout.
1. It costs $700 billion dollars, which is as much money as the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. It amounts to $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in America.
2. This $700 billion will all be borrowed money. The plan raises the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. That is $11,300,000,000,000.
3. It gives Sec. Henry Paulson, formerly the head of Goldman Sachs, the power to buy assets from his former firm with no court or administrative oversight.
4. Goldman Sachs, like many Wall Street firms, gave its CEO a $67.9 million bonus last year. That is more than 1,400 times what the median American earns. Yet the plan has no provision to cap salaries or reduce bonuses at Wall Street banks that take taxpayer money.
5.The bailout has a "reverse dutch auction" format that allows Wall Street firms to set the price taxpayers will pay.
6.The 5 companies managing the bailout auction are also Wall Street firms, and will likely receive billions of tax dollars in fees.
7. The plan buys "troubled assets" from foreign banks.
8. The plan hurts responsible U.S. banks by keeping reckless, insolvent investment banks in business.
9. The idea that taxpayers will make money is a fraud. If a profit was possible, private speculators would readily buy these "troubled assets." Instead, the bailout lets Wall Street push its losses on the taxpayer.
10. The plan violates basic principles of American capitalism by creating a system of "private profits, socialized losses."
"This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest. It's terrible."
-- Allan Meltzer, Carnegie Mellon School of Business
"It's a straight subsidy to financial institutions. You're essentially giving them money.
-- Martin Baily, former Clinton Administration Council of Economic Advisers
"There's a tendency for people to think these are stocks and bonds and you know what the price is. The problem is people are operating in a world in which nobody knows what the hell is going on. There’s some naïve assumptions about how this would function."
-- Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan Administration economist
"This administration is asking for a $700 billion blank check to be put in the hands of Henry Paulson, a guy who totally missed this, and has been wrong about almost everything."
-- Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research
"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."
--William Greider, The Nation
"I am concerned that Treasury's proposal is neither workable nor comprehensive, despite its enormous price tag. In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted."
-- Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
"It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time."
--Historian John Steele Gordon
"The plan is stupid...Voters will break against anyone who votes for it. I thought if [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin had written that, I’d understand it."
-- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
S.O.T.B. |
