Bernie Buzz

[DianeK]

Now is the Time -- 10/22/2008

By Senator Bernie Sanders
(appeared today in The Huffington Post, The Hill, The Guardian, and on BuzzFlash.com)

These are frightening and unusual times. The world of finance and the overall economy are both in perilous condition. Almost every day a new crisis erupts. The stock market has plunged dramatically, and is more volatile, than at any time in memory. Loans between banks have dried up. Major financial houses have either failed or merged. Government bailout follows government bailout.

Just how deep the financial crisis is can be seen from this paradox: the Bush administration, the most wild and irresponsible defender of right-wing economic ideology and free markets in our nation’s history, now has to muster one initiative after another to intervene in the financial markets. It is even in the process of nationalizing banks.

The economic crisis has received less attention in the media than the financial crisis, but it is no less real or threatening. Unemployment, which is conservatively estimated in our country, last month hit a five-year high of 6.1 percent, and it is rising. In July, home prices – the main source of most Americans’ wealth – fell 16 percent in 20 U.S. cities from a year earlier. The bottom is nowhere in sight. Foreclosures are at the highest rate in almost three decades. Health care, food and educational costs are rising, and more and more Americans are lining up at emergency shelters and food shelves.



http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=304476

To respond to a Poll concerning the $700 Billion Bailout please follow this link http://www.sanders.senate.gov/polls/

[billyoc]

1. I wish we had 99 more just like him.