Poverty: Cheap Loans at Insanely High Rates? Give Us More.

We've hit bottom, and now this guy wants us to break out a jack hammer?

the very definition of subprime indicates that the loan is risky, why do we have to bail out lenders who knowingly take that risk it is NOT THE TAXPAYERS RESPONSIBILITY to help sloppy greedy lenders, if that were soo I need help saving my business...

Subprime crisis cannot be the only contributor to the current economic meltdown. The mad oil price plays a big part too. The statistics below help.

The US motorists burn away more than 16% of the worldwide demand of 85 million barrels per day.

With the increase in global population and more and more people moving up the social mobility ladder, greater amount of energy would be required. The world simply does not have the abundance of energy (renewable or non-renewable) at the moment to cope with this relentless upgrade of standard of living within a relatively short time.

One immediate way to alleviate the worrying situation would be for the owners of 650 million (10% of the number of global 6.5 billion people) road vehicles to cut down the usage worldwide. Get a smaller car and use the public transport more often. Avoid driving when the destination is within walking distance.

To help the poor to live a better life, the rich should sacrifice a bit by curbing their unnecessary extravagance.
(Tan Boon Tee)

So you are telling us that what is toxic for US will be good for the third world!
is this the new hot item to export from USA?...we already did the jobs, the goods are already imported only.

Absolutley 100% correct. The depression will not hit rock bottom until some form of sub-prime returns. Most impoertant fact is that all the current financial problems where nNOT caused by sub=prime but the rapid and complete elimination of it. Only sub-prime loans will allow want to be home owners purchase.

"ABOVE ALL THINGS I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to, conviced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." Thomas Jefferson

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.

Isn't foreign aid all about subprime lending? We say that 250 million bucks for some Third World country is a loan, but even before Bono, we never expected repayment of the principle, much less the interest. We did it to curry favors and spread our way of life around the globe.

The subprime housing mess was just the government's way of buying our complicity in a failing way of life the planet can no longer sustain. I don't feel angry at the people who took out NINJA loans. They're no different than 90 percent of Africa.