Paulson's Panic

Is everyone forgetting that Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid and others were involved in the weekend discussions that generated this proposal? All sides have said that there is room for negotiations as long as it can be done expeditiously. I agree with many including John McCain that this is not what the majority of American's want and cannot pass in its current form. There must be oversight, transparency & protections for the American taxpayers. Limits on pay to the executives and the return on investment to the American taxpayer before the shareholders should be non-negotiable. They should all just feel lucky that they may avoid landing flat on their face like many of them deserve. BUT...there should also not be a chargedown on mortgage loans of people facing foreclosure. Face it, all of our property values have fallen and they may be the only ones with equity when this market turns around if the Dems get this added on. This crisis can also be contributed to these individual Americans that wanted to live above their means, made poor decisions and are now paying the price. I do not have a problem with their terms being negotiated (i.e. interest rates, years of repayment, fixed vs. adjustable, etc), but the government better not give them free money and reward them at my expense.

As for Paulson...I have heard many Democrats as well as Republicans that have praised him for his knowledge, work ethic and leadership and his "Panic" as its been called, I believe is actually urgency stemming from the facts of this issue. Jim Cramer said this morning on the conservative broadcast network, NBC that if there is not a bailout forthcoming, that there are at least three other major banks that could go under in the next 72 hours. That sounds urgent to me.

Pray tell, Mr. Samuelson,

Why is it so bad to have bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages? It's certain, it helps people, it hurts only the banks who shouldn't have lent money for an overvalued home - and they were in a far better position to evaluate value than the consumer.

Or are you just the unspoken emissary of the American Bankers Association and the Republican Brain Trust?

At least the dems aren't just giving them another trillion dollar blank check, like they did with Iraq. There's debate and there will be safeguards and people held accountable, or I say we're all screwed. The economy needs to eb shored up, but the execs, brokers and other assorted greed mongers need to be taken to court and made examples of.

Show people that if you, as the "trained" professional knowlingly do something......................like say recommend a $600,000.00 house on a $40,000.00 salary, then you should be suspended, investigated, fined and or imprisoned.

People will lose their retirement savings, their EF's and be in dire straits if something is not done. Will it be like the great depression..................not likely. It's been over a week and the world hasn't fallen apart yet cause the world knows we will fix this sh_t...........we always do, eventually.

Tighter regs on finance, health and energy are essential as our "free market" obviously CANNOT be trusted to handle their finances well and look out for the AVERAGE american, not the suit or CEO with "options" and "golden parachutes."

If they get a golden parachute, they should be thrown out of a plane with it to use.

How about this, just pay all of the American tax paying citizen's debt and give each tax paying hard working family a $300K coushin with the exception that they invest at least $100K and call it a day. And this would cost less than $700billion. At least this way the consumers are being bailed out and given a new start for a change.

How about this, just pay all of the American tax paying citizen's debt and give each tax paying hard working family a $300K coushin with the exception that they invest at least $100K and call it a day. And this would cost less than $700billion. At least this way the consumers are being bailed out and given a new start for a change.

Every Person involved in this type of Felonious activity should be MADE EXAMPLE of and regardless if they or Members of the Government, Corporations, or what, we need to Prosecute them at the Square Uptown, For all to Witness!

I think they should MAKE an EXAMPLE of Every person involved

The whole damned system is based on ill will. Let it collapse

The whole damned system is based on ill will. Let it collapse

how in the world can bush have the nerve to come out and create this panic and attempt to sell the American people on this deal. Let's not forget some of the other deals he's gotten us into.

The whole billionaire bailout is based on one premise. The housing market will ???recover.??? On this so-called recovery, President Bush is willing to gamble $ 700 billion dollars. Yet Ben Bernanke cannot tell us if and when the housing market stabilize. Bernanke can???t, but I can.

First of all, abolish the APR. That???s what got us into this mess. Let???s go back to the traditional 20% down, 30 fixed mortgage. Then let???s look at each local market and figure out what the media income is. The median house price should be geared to match the median income. In other words, whatever a person with median income on 30 fixed-mortgage can afford - that should be the median housing price. In addition, we need to consider the following facts:
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1. The next generation will be saddled with a staggering amount of student debt,. This debt affects these students??? abilities to open businesses, begin medical practice (especially as a GP), start families, ??? and buy homes.

2. A lack of health insurance. More and more citizens are either losing health insurance, or forced to except lousy health insurance packages. McCain's YOYO proposals will cause the average family to spend more on health insurance, meaning less money available for mortgages

3. The destruction of public education will mean families will have to pay more for tuition, starting at kindergarten.

4. Unfair trade policies and taxation are both encouraging corporations to either outsourcce jobs or to important ???guest workers??? who will work for slave labor wages. In addition, destroying unions will also cause a drop in incomea . That too will affect the amount of money people can spend of housing.

5. Environmental destruction, and refused to clean up toxic waste sites. For example, the FDA has refused to do anything about the perchlorate that has entered the ground water, particularly in the Southwest. Toxic substances in drinking water will eventually affect the value of property.

6. Global warming will also affect housing values. People who live in areas subject to hurricanes, floods or tornadoes will face massive increases in insurance premiums and property values will collapse.

A simple billionaire bailout does address these problems, and unless we do address these problems we simply throwing money away. The Republican party???s reckless disregard for sensible regulation caused the current Wall Street meltdown.The Republicans??? disregard for the issues I???ve listed here will not only guarantee the failure of the billionaire bail out, but also create far more serious economic problems in the near future.


The rich should be forced to put up collateral from their own assets. Second, rich need to be taxes to provide the funds remedy all these problems above.

Henry Paulson cashed out about 500 million dollars in Goldman Sachs stock tax free under a law that allows people to sell without tax consequences in order to liquidate potential conflicts of interest prior to government service. So he is incredibly rich off of stock in one of the prime companies that caused the mess, and he was also Chairman of Goldman at the time. Now he wants to be in charge of the repair of his own mess. While there is a certain symmetry to that idea, he either was incompetent as CEO of Goldman when he created this mess or he did not care. Probably he was just not competent (if competent he would have foreseen the consequences of his actions). So now we want to give him the money when he is proven to be either incompetent or without understanding of the consequences of his actions. Ridiculous. See http://www.fedupusa.com/ for a solution that makes more sense. Yes some banks will fail, the bad ones, and that is a good thing. Sorry if they are friends of Mr. Paulson or Mr. Bernanke. But sometimes we just do not make our hundred million a year.

Can you imagine electing McCain, the likely event that he becomes incapacity due to age-related illness, and President Palin presiding over this mess?
Watch Palin get up there with her palms out to catch the rain of Jesus to get her elected. This is just a few minutes after her witch-hunting preacher said this:
"The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/24/171613/532/36/609149 (see Palin and her witch hunter preacher around minutes 7-9)
This is the same preacher just a couple of months ago Palin praised as helping her get into the Governor's mansion.
So to those who have suggested that we can rest assured Palin is not a nut job, do we really know what Palin thinks, that she's not totally nuts? Here she is, up on stage with an anti-Semite witch hunter after he just spewed some anti-Semitic trash, hands out to catch the rain of Jesus from his prayers.
Maybe there is an explanation for this. We don't have time, however, to get comfortable before November 5th that this Palin is not a nut job who would seek to impose her radical religious beliefs on America.
This video is just another stunner in a long line of them that keep bubbling up. Palin is on the record as saying that it should be illegal for a raped woman not to have her rapist's child. What else does she believe?
And Palin has no credibility. She keeps repeating her bald faced exposed lie that she killed the bridge to nowhere.

I just listened to the President's message with complete disbelief. It sounded exactly like the sales pitch that we got before the Iraq War...same hyperbole, same urgency, same demand for complete trust. WHAT???

Somebody needs to stand up and say that the Emperor has no clothes. Bush/Cheney have NO credibility. This country will survive another three months until the next Congress is in place. But it seems they want to bury my grandchildren in debt as their last act out the door. Debt that we can clearly see will benefit the people who got us into this mess...why can't the corporations that made billions on the way up pay for their own cleanup!

We keep hearing how complicated this is. Is it really? Isn't it about greed? If the biggest financial issues in this country right now are that we don't save, that credit has been too easy to get, that we are drowning in debt, HOW does it help solve those problems to adopt a plan to "free up credit" to help Americans take on more debt...by putting the country further into hock to...WHO? The Chinese? And the bailout will include multi-nationals and foreign banks. My grandkids could pay to keep a foreign bank afloat? Does ANY of this make sense?

The President and Vice President should be required to resign or be impeached. That's an action that Congress could take that would actually make a difference.

i think it is crazy that we are going to bail out these banks. They have made an outrageous amount of money from mortgages over the years. Their analysts weighted the risks of the products they offered and decided to take the risk and offer crazy mortgage options for borrowers. They took the risk because of greed. Like many business that are in trouble they need to look at ways to reduce their expenses and the biggest expense is the millions of dollars that an analyst and executives make each year. The bail out is not going to solve the problem. Why can't the banks agree that ARMS that are coming due not adjust? What about allowing them to keep the same mortgage they originally got and over a certain amount of time the rate adjusts minimally? If we could keep people in the mortgages they have had the foreclopsure rate should decline. Which in turn would stop the housing values from declining. Every time someone in the neighborhood forecloses it is a domino effect and hurts their neighbors. Now their neighbor can't refi because the value has gone down so they are forced to stay in their ARM that is about to adjust or foreclosure too. Stop the foreclosures. The investment banks need to be responsible for their actions and figure out what to do on their own vs. waiting for the goverment and taxpayers to bail them out.

i think it is crazy that we are going to bail out these banks. They have made an outrageous amount of money from mortgages over the years. Their analysts weighted the risks of the products they offered and decided to take the risk and offer crazy mortgage options for borrowers. They took the risk because of greed. Like many business that are in trouble they need to look at ways to reduce their expenses and the biggest expense is the millions of dollars that an analyst and executives make each year. The bail out is not going to solve the problem. Why can't the banks agree that ARMS that are coming due not adjust? What about allowing them to keep the same mortgage they originally got and over a certain amount of time the rate adjusts minimally? If we could keep people in the mortgages they have had the foreclopsure rate should decline. Which in turn would stop the housing values from declining. Every time someone in the neighborhood forecloses it is a domino effect and hurts their neighbors. Now their neighbor can't refi because the value has gone down so they are forced to stay in their ARM that is about to adjust or foreclosure too. Stop the foreclosures. The investment banks need to be responsible for their actions and figure out what to do on their own vs. waiting for the goverment and taxpayers to bail them out.

the ordinary taxpayer will again feel the real cost - why is it that those of use who pay their bills, honor their debts are time and time again made to pay. This has to come with some benefit of either a certain tax credit or some method of using those assets to secure funding for social security and/or healthcare for all - there has got to be a creative way to package this to make this happen -