Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street Bailout

[Just-plain-Kathy]

The NY Times

September 21, 2008

Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street Bailout
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting virtually unfettered authority for the Treasury to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets from financial institutions based in the United States.

The proposal was stunning for its stark simplicity: less than three pages, it would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, allowing the Treasury to buy and resell mortgage debt as it sees fit.

Staff members from the Treasury Department and the House Financial Services and Senate banking committees immediately began meeting on Capitol Hill, where negotiations were likely to be complicated but quick. Democratic Congressional leaders have pledged to help approve legislation by the end of this week.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21cong.html?...

...So guys, what do you think? Is this a good thing? I don't know enough about how this all works, but as a tax payer I don't lik it.

[seemslikeadream]

1. We are all slaves now and

so are our children and grandchildren

[geckosfeet]

2. When you buy the government, you can make them do amazing things.

And it is all legal!

[neverforget]

3. We should just give it to them no questions asked and no strings attached.

I trust them to do the right thing.......

All this does is kick the can down the road. Someday, WE THE PEOPLE, will have to pay for living on the credit card for decades. It is unsustainable and this is the beginning of the great unwinding. We need to get our fiscal house in order and this is going to be very painful. But, like everything else this gov't does, it does so with a band-aid and without solving the underlying problem: credit. As in too much credit. Until that is addressed, it's all lipstick on a pig.

Listen to Dr. Ravi Batra on Thom Hartmann's show from Friday 9/19/08. He's spot on.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_conten...
Edited to fix link

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. why Greenspan is one of the architects of this mess:

this quote from Kevin Phillips, on Bill Moyers Journal:

"...the upshot is that during Greenspan's tenure from 1987 to 2006, what they call total credit market debt in the United States quadrupled, quadrupled from about $11 trillion up to $44, $45, $46 trillion. And finance got the great bulk of it. And Greenspan would do nothing to disturb finance.

He wouldn't puncture a bubble. He wouldn't crack down on the exotic mortgages. He really wouldn't do much of anything except give obscure speeches in which, you know, he mumbled the different directions so nobody would know what he meant. But basically he gave finance what they wanted. "

I strongly recommend either watching the clip of the Moyer's interview
or reading the transcript, @
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09192008/transcript4....

for a deeply sobering picture of how bad this mess is.
( kudos to Dover for providing the original post and link)