Reply #15: Rush transcript

[HamdenRice]

AMY GOODMAN: Dean Baker, you’re the head of Center for Economic and Policy Research. It’s based in Washington, D.C. The climate right now? I mean, watching the Sunday talk shows, there was this clear sense that if this is not accomplished in the next few days, that—you know, it’s like before the invasion of Iraq. We can be hit by a weapon of mass destruction, is basically the idea. And this is about not saving Wall Street, but saving the American people. That was the message that was put out immediately yesterday.

DEAN BAKER: Well, I’m going to walk a line here. I mean, there is a point. The system of payments stopped working last week. If that happened, we would have to, like, go to buy our groceries with gold. We had a serious situation. Now, on the other hand, the Fed and Treasury were able to deal with it. They are able to deal with it; they have the resources to deal with that. But that is a very serious situation. So they aren’t talking about total nonsense in that. Now, they’re trying to scare Congress to death, because it’s not as though we have to do it today or tomorrow. And, you know, what I would say is we do have to keep the system operating, but it should be punitive.

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Overall he and the other guest see this as an historical opportunity to be "punitive" toward Wall Street, to get equity in them and reduce CEO pay by 90-95%. The public hates the financials now, so this is a tremendous opportunity for progressives.

But the crisis is very real.