Paulson Waffles On Homeowner Relief

[sabra]

Source: CBS News

CBS Evening News: Treasury Secretary Says Bailout Should Include "Mortgage Relief" But, "No Foreclosure Protection"

(CBS) The Bush administration went all out today on behalf of its $700 billion financial bailout plan. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, calling for speedy congressional approval, with no major changes of a plan whose price-tag amounts to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child living in the U.S. Although support for the Wall Street rescue is strong, some Democrats want to include help for strapped homeowners facing foreclosure, CBS News correspondent Kimberley Dozier reports. Paulson appealed to the American public this morning, making his case for the largest financial bailout since the U.S. depression.

"We felt this was the best way to stabilize the situation, unclog the system, so it can work," Paulson told CBS News' Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.

...

But on ABC's This Week, Paulson seemed to back off the idea of carving out some of the massive bailout sum for homeowners who got in over their heads.

"No foreclosure protections, no restrictions," Paulson said.

He seemed to say "no" to adding anything else to the bill.

"What I'm saying is, we need this to be clean and quick, and we need to get it in place," the Treasury Secretary continued.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/21/eveningnews/main4464413.shtml

[lonestarnot]

1. No to anything that would impede the outright theft.

[Naturalist]

2. YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT THIS!!!!!

If the American People with their Representation fail to arrest all crooks involved with this scam that has been going on for who knows how long, the Dollar and all Credibility will go down the tubes. All Foreign Investors will pull out of the American Market and your 401k's will be worthless. It needs to happen now. A statement that we intend to get to the bottom of what has happened and that all crooks will be jailed. Without that no amount of money for bailouts or loans will do anything.

[MindMatter]

16. True colors are showing

If we hadn't already seen 7 years of this administration, Paulsen's position would be considered utterly outrageous. But these guys are working the Shock Doctrine for all it is worth.

At this point, the best move for the Dems is to get together and pass a bill that gives Paulsen the $700 he claims is necessary, but puts serious restrictions on executive compensation and forces the recipients to give up equivalent equity. Basically the Dems should put forward their own bill and not negotiate with Paulsen.

Put that bill on Bush's desk and let him explain why he can't sign it until we take out the provisions allowing these crooks to pay themselves multi-million dollar packages.

The reality is that they don't want the bailout that bad. Wheat they want is a HANDOUT. By forcing that out into the open, it would have a settling effect on the markets because:

a) it would take some time to play out, allowing everybody to catch their breath; and

b) people would see that it isn't quite the crisis it was billed to be.

[yourout]

3. No Foreclosure Protection.....no deal

Essentially we are backing our own mortgages.

[Wizard777]

6. Essentially we're saving these business from being thrown out into the streets.

So they can throw families out into the street. What happens if we let the banks and mortgage companies go down the tubes? Everyone with a mortgage held by these companies gets a free house. Who's gonna collect from them?

[Platypus]

9. Half the story

Yeah, everyone who owes them money gets a free house, and everyone who works for them loses a job. Not everyone who works for a financial company is a fat-cat exec or trader, you know. They need IT people and administrative assistants and janitors and everything else too. Letting people default is not the solution; it just shifts the burden from one group of regular people (who arguably got into that situation with their own bad decisions) to another group of regular people (who did absolutely nothing to deserve it).

Don't get me wrong, I think there needs to be help for individuals as well as institutions, but forgiving default is the wrong way to do it. A better approach would be to offer assistance to qualified homeowners people who actually live in those homes, not people buying vacation homes and certainly not real-estate speculators. Help them make the payments, they get to keep their houses, mortgage-company and bank employees get to keep their jobs. Fund the program not with tax money from individuals but with fees levied over the next ten years on the institutions that made the bad loans or participated in the mortgage-backed-security and collateralized-debt-obligation parties. Put *them* on a payment program just like they'd do with someone who couldn't pay their debts the normal way. Maybe they'll figure out that crime and irresponsibility don't pay as well as they thought, and start acting like responsible corporate citizens instead of first predators and then pigs at the public trough.

[AndyTiedye]

13. No Free House. The Loans Just Get Sold Again, to Some Even Bigger Entity

The only way you get a free house is if they lose the loan paperwork.
That does happen sometimes.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4053728&mesg_id=4054053

[fifthoffive]

4. Trickle-down

Yet again the Republicans are using trickle-down economics to design the bail-out.

I call bull-hockey! If the base is strong, the top will hold. If the base crumbles, the whole structure falls.

[Triana]

5. DAMN IT DEMS - GET A SPINE! NO foreclosure protections, NO restrictions?! Fine. NO DEAL.

STAND UP to this goddamned THIEF!

[Trillo]

17. education is one problem here

People who have completed K-12, then additionally completed college, have been selected for compliance and cooperation and "doing what they're told".

This isn't my original idea, BTW, but one I believe is absolutely accurate. See:

How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/75081/?page=entire

While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.

Sure, there's an occasional rabble rouser in the mix of college grads, but when dealing with mass numbers of people, a few don't matter much. They'll be marginalized by the economic system and likely will never become a Top 400 Mover and Shaker (how many do?). Heck, if they're an educated rabble rouser, I wish them luck even moving up the corporate ladder, they'll need all the luck the known universe can muster.

Unfortunately, today it seems, a Tom Paine would need to appear on Forbes Richest list to have any effect at all.

"Too Big to Fail"! and "Get with the Corporate Program!"

[customerserviceguy]

7. What did we expect

when we made the head of Goldman Sachs into the head of the US Treasury? He was part of the problem in the first place.

[redqueen]

11. Couldn't ask for a better example of putting the fox in charge of the hen house. (nt)

[pdefalla]

14. Paulson for Emperor

Paulson is asking us to make him the single most powerful person on the face of the earth. There will be no one else with the ability to control and distribute that insane amount of money, and absolutely NO CONTROLS on his power! As a former banking industry insider, he will structure his plan so that we use government funds to buy peoples mortgages (their homes), and then sell them back at pennies on the dollar (or simply give them) to his corporate buddies who can then sell them (essentially for the second time) for huge profits when the housing market comes back (it will).
This will complete the neocon dream of transferring taxpayer dollars into corporate wallets. Not just by no-bid contracts and privitization, but by actually taking people's homes away from them and giving them to the banks.
Pretty amazing. What ever happened to "Of the people, by the people, for the people"?

[fasttense]

8. Why is No one asking idiot Paulson what happens in

3 or 4 weeks when we are going to be in this Exact same position? This is just more (a whole lot more) of what the American government has already done for the financial idiots. The bailouts for Bear Stearns and Freddie and Fannie, didn't stop the implosion of the US economy, why do they think it is going to work this time?

Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

It is just another welfare payment to incompetent CEOs.

Until they increase DEMAND (NOT supply) by increasing the majority of American's pay and bringing back the hundreds of millions of jobs sent off shore, NOTHING is going to change the downward spiral into economic hell.

This destruction of the economy Always happens when "free" market idiots try to implement their idiocy.

[redqueen]

10. He's like a used car salesman... "Hurry up now, this is a deal right here...

the finance guys don't know I'm doing this deal right here... you gotta act now... don't think about it, do it now... NOW!"

:eyes:

[liberal N proud]

12. All they are interested in is insuring the CEO's get their huge salaries.

[redqueen]

15. ...

:kick:

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

18. "Clean and quick"- like a 3am back alley rape.

In and out before the victim knows what hit 'em.

[Supersedeas]

19. "We"....who the fuck is the we that needs this rubberstamp so bad