Forbes: What Will the Federal Bailout Plan Cost? | Newsweek From Forbes.com

What Will the Bailout Cost?

Forbes.com

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

SPONSORED BY

New York Democrats Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton had their own ideas.

Schumer proposed the return of an idea from the Depression: a Reconstruction Finance Corp. that would inject capital into banks through stock purchases, leaving it to the banks to dispose of troubled assets. Schumer also proposed resurrecting judicial mortgage modifications, an idea that failed to survive the housing rescue bill passed earlier this summer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association and other banking lobbies campaigned vigorously against the proposal, which would have allowed judges to write down the value of mortgages.

Clinton called for the creation of an entity that would buy up and quarantine mortgage securities that are the bane of the banking industry at the moment. She also calls for a ban on short-selling stocks, saying it would provide breathing room for markets to recover.

Such a ban was initiated in the U.K. starting Friday, and the Securities and Exchange Commission put one in place in U.S. markets Friday. Financial stocks soared, erasing most of the week's losses.

« Prev Page

Smart, regulatory policies are an unfortunate necessity (and can boost confidence) when human beings have unlimited wants and organized GREED will always seek to be unbridled. History teaches this when you analyze any large market system with many competing interests.

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. I ask Newsweek readers to PLEASE consider the following comparison of our institutions: our pubic schools and our private financial "powerhouses" that are now being bailed out with our taxpayer dollars.

We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Think about this, voters PLEASE! Not just for the sake of your own personal interests, but for the sake of our country.

Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing. No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" (terrible for morale) because of unrealistic goals/unfunded mandates funded by politicians seeking to score political points. What is often "left behind" in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students.

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists that effectively secured deregulation and what they consider "optimal" conditions for success (deregulation). And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of other peoples' money.

John McCain has a record of being a major player and advocate of deregulation and has taken money TIME AFTER TIME from the deregulation lobbyists - the very same "fat cats" he's now criticizing! NOW McCain is calling for change, when his deregulation in part has created this mess?

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth way of thinking has infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately, young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire corporate lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have limited resources. And there are little organized efforts to reform and progress/ lead our public schools into the 21st century. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there are sustained efforts to improve, fund, and prioritize education.

In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Let this difficult period be a lesson. We all want healthy money markets and retirements. We must see the connection between healthy public schools and a healthy economy that is investing in human capital. Hopefully (as we say in class) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

Comrade Paulson and Commissar Bernanke are making the world safe from those capitalist pigs. Let's hear it for globalization and the free markets that require such help. In China, they call this intervention business as usual. In America, we call it saving the people who caused the problem because they are too big to fail. These people also make the largest campaign contributions, but that was never a consideration.The market is free until it is not. Or enough people realize it never was. If you play with cheaters and you don't know it; shame on you. If you knew they would cheat; shame on you. If you believe they are just helping the free market through a bad time; shame on you. If you are investing because you think Comrades and Commissars are on your side; forget shame, go directly to suicide.

Member Comments

- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: melbee1971 @ 09/21/2008 3:35:32 PM

"ABOVE ALL THINGS I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." -Thomas Jefferson
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: melbee1971 @ 09/20/2008 5:18:50 PM

Smart, regulatory policies are an unfortunate necessity (and can boost confidence) when human beings have unlimited wants and organized GREED will always seek to be unbridled. History teaches this when you analyze any large market system with many competing interests.

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. I ask Newsweek readers to PLEASE consider the following comparison of our institutions: our pubic schools and our private financial "powerhouses" that are now being bailed out with our taxpayer dollars.

We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Think about this, voters PLEASE! Not just for the sake of your own personal interests, but for the sake of our country.

Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing. No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" (terrible for morale) because of unrealistic goals/unfunded mandates funded by politicians seeking to score political points. What is often "left behind" in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students.

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists that effectively secured deregulation and what they consider "optimal" conditions for success (deregulation). And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of other peoples' money.

John McCain has a record of being a major player and advocate of deregulation and has taken money TIME AFTER TIME from the deregulation lobbyists - the very same "fat cats" he's now criticizing! NOW McCain is calling for change, when his deregulation in part has created this mess?

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth way of thinking has infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately, young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire corporate lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have limited resources. And there are little organized efforts to reform and progress/ lead our public schools into the 21st century. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there are sustained efforts to improve, fund, and prioritize education.

In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Let this difficult period be a lesson. We all want healthy money markets and retirements. We must see the connection between healthy public schools and a healthy economy that is investing in human capital. Hopefully (as we say in class) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: timrogers @ 09/19/2008 9:00:36 PM

Comrade Paulson and Commissar Bernanke are making the world safe from those capitalist pigs. Let's hear it for globalization and the free markets that require such help. In China, they call this intervention business as usual. In America, we call it saving the people who caused the problem because they are too big to fail. These people also make the largest campaign contributions, but that was never a consideration.The market is free until it is not. Or enough people realize it never was. If you play with cheaters and you don't know it; shame on you. If you knew they would cheat; shame on you. If you believe they are just helping the free market through a bad time; shame on you. If you are investing because you think Comrades and Commissars are on your side; forget shame, go directly to suicide.