The House is discussing another economic stimulus package right now!!!
Please email your congressman and tell them our economy depends on it.
Nancy Pelosi: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
Hilary Clinton: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/help/contact/
John Shadegg: http://johnshadegg.house.gov/Contact/ContactForm.htm
I wrote John Shadegg complaining of bailout plan and he wrote me an email "assuring" me it was the right thing to do. Needs to get BIT*HED at more I guess.
Shades of Schadenfreude
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Still, many Germans are mad that some of their own state-owned banks invested so heavily in American debt and got away with billion-euro taxpayer bailouts. "The politicians fired a couple of scapegoats and for the rest of them it's business as usual," complains Marina Hesse, a legal secretary in Berlin. She also worries the crisis means that German banks will tighten credit again for small businesses and homeowners. "This will definitely hit us too," she says. Her family owns a house they're renting out and need a loan for a major renovation. They already had a hard time getting the last big loan and fear the banks will tighten credit again. Restaurant owner Gliese fears that the crisis will affect the German economy, too, and that next year his customers will start saving on restaurant bills.
—Stefan Theil, Berlin
Japan: Critical of 'U.S. style capitalism'
Then reigning sentiment in Japan is déjà vu. The failure of Lehman Brothers and the Treasury Department's historic bailout plans have echoes in Japan's troubled financial past. There is a lesson to be learned from Japan's response to financial crisis, Japanese experts say. "When a bubble bursts and the financial system gets destabilized, providing liquidity is not enough to overcome a crisis," Yutaka Yamaguchi, who served as deputy governor at the Bank of Japan during part of the financial crisis here, told one newspaper. "Unless financial institutions get recapitalized by raising funds in the markets or receiving public funds, the financial crisis will not end. That's the lesson [America] should learn from Japan's financial crisis." Yamaguchi says the U.S. financial model has effectively gone bankrupt. We are witnessing a "turning point," he adds—just as in the 1930s.
Others haven't been so polite. Columnist Kiyoshi Okonogi described the over-extended U.S. economy as "a bubble boosted by greed and leverage" and "a sort of casino betting on recklessness." Writing in a popular monthly magazine's latest issue, columnist Hideo Tamura wrote that "Wall Street had it coming…The nature of America's financial crisis is the failure of Wall Street's business model in and of itself."
Until recently, the U.S. financial crisis looked to Japanese people like a fire on a distant shore. Not anymore. The economy is slowing markedly and stock and property prices are falling. Business magazines have described the impact of the U.S. crisis on Japan as a "severe earthquake." The bankruptcy rate is rising, especially among real-estate developers, as U.S. investors pull out of the Japanese property market.
Many Japanese were already critical of "U.S.-style capitalism," which they saw led to excessive economic inequality. Such critical views will likely intensify and spread in Japan as the crisis deepens.
—Akiko Kashiwagi
South Korea: Mixed feelings.
South Koreans look at the U.S. financial meltdown with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they are deeply concerned by the crisis of the Wall Street that has been the model of their financial system for the past ten years. Ever since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis that nearly destroyed the Korean financial system, Korea has vigorously reformed its corporate and financial sectors in a bid to follow the U.S. standard. Korea even tried to build its own Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, believing investment banking is the future of its financial industry.
Discuss