The Suckitude Of the Wall Street Bailout In Quotes

Via BoingBoing by way of  10zenmonkeys.com

This is not good.

Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening. — Newt Gingrich

What the proposal actually did…was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review… [I]f Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress… there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.”

— Paul Krugman

“If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts…won’t saddle American taxpayers with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don’t know politics… Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for…so few.”

— Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor

“This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest. It’s terrible.”

— Allan Meltzer, former economic adviser to President Reagan
and Carnegie Mellon professor of political economy, quoted in the New York Times
For more quotes: 10zenmonkeys.com

  • New Name

    does anyone have a better alternative?

  • Aunt Bertha

    I think there should be a give back from the CEO’s and CFO’s who have raped the system to their benefit. Why were they given $90 million + as golden a parachute can get? I’d like their names and the congress/senate members who let them run the market into the ground. I will not vote for one of them ever again. This is the beginning and it is not going to be good.

  • JUST WONDERING

    Are these ‘Bailouts’ available to cross-border mortgage companies (SU CASITA) catering to immigrants who didn’t qualify for the loans here? Possibly given to illegal immigrants that we as taxpayers will continue to support even more? Just wondering if that is being addressed?

    Interested in background?
    SEE: AP ARTICLE BY IVAN MORENO (DENVER)
    “EVEN MORTGAGES ARE CROSSING THE BORDER”

  • Old Timer

    In an unregulated market, rich people gamble with investor’s money. When they make good bets, the investors win and the finance people get a share of the winnings. When they lose, they lose. The investor’s investment loses value, the investors have no winnings to share.
    What’s all the fuss ? They all knew they were gambling in the first place. If I drop a bundle , at a casino, or on Wall St, why should I expect my losses to be covered by the government ?
    Some made bad bets and lost. That is why it called gambling. The big losers have assets they can sell and move on. They will take a loss when they sell, as gamblers short of cash always do.
    We, the ordinary taxpayers, need to stay out of it and to keep our government out of it. The world will not stop spinning if some rich wall st people have a bad year and only earn two or three times what ordinary people earn. They will survive without enormous year end bonuses.

  • Anonymous

    I think if the breakaway Republican group has its way and tries to stall the government bail out to hold Wall St accountable there will be so much squabbling and buck passing that the whole thing will fall apart.

    Credit will dry up further and the market will tank. So I think they have to pursue the bail out.

    Obama must be elected to stick to the Iraq pull out because we’ll need the money that had been diverted for the war for our own fiscal mess.

  • Diane C: (Bush=Moron?)

    And still the Crawford village idiot comes on tv to tell us the problem is big and we need a rescue plan. DUH!
    But perhaps Paul Begala said it best on Anderson Cooper last night: called Bush “high-functioning moron”! And that both sides of the aisle treat him as such!
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2008/09/25/begala-pres-bush-high-functioning-moron

  • Old Timer

    Here’s another plan to solve this problem, arrived in my email this morning

    I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
    Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.
    To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.
    Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..
    So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00.
    My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.
    Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
    So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.
    Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
    That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.
    But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
    A husband and wife has $595,000.00.
    What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
    Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved.
    Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads
    Put away money for college – it’ll be there
    Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
    Buy a new car – create jobs
    Invest in the market – capital drives growth
    Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care improves
    Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else
    Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.
    If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it…instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( ‘vote buy’ ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.
    If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!
    As for AIG – liquidate it.
    Sell off its parts.
    Let American General go back to being American General.
    Sell off the real estate.
    Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.
    Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.
    Sure it’s a crazy idea that can ‘never work.’
    But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!
    How do you spell Economic Boom?
    I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC
    And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.
    Ahhh…I feel so much better getting that off my chest.
    Kindest personal regards,
    Birk
    T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic

    PS: Feel free to pass this on

  • Diane C:

    Bravo! Thanks O.T. We were just trying to do this math this morning over coffee, but stopped the exercise when we got off track day-dreaming of how to spend the money!

  • Old Timer

    I did not check the math, but the concept is beautiful. Whatever number they finally agree on, distributed to us, instead of to Wall St, is a marvelous idea. I am retired on a fixed pension, with no cost-of-living adjustments. The value of my pension, which looked like plenty when I retired, has shrunk, in real buying power, to the point where we wonder how much longer we can stay around here.

  • Chris MC

    Old Timer -
    How much of a factor are property taxes in what you just said? What impact would a property tax cap on your ability/willingness to stay where you are?

  • Anonymous

    The Wall Street crisis puts stress on commuters in affluent Fairfield County, which includes Darien, Westport, New Canaan, Stamford, and Greenwich (home of former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld,maybe an unemployment office at the Sono train station may be more in line with new business there.

    The New York suburbs in Westchester, New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut could get hit harder than Manhattan itself,

    But Ct is not doing as bad as the rest of the country according to some republican mayors,wish I could find Dicks quote right now.

  • Old Timer

    Property taxes take back about 40% of the pension. More and more people I know are driving vehicles registered where there is little or no property tax. Illegal, of course, but nobody seems to be doing much about it. I even see people doing business here using vehicles registered someplace else, probably for the same reason.
    A cap now would keep the tax burden from getting worse, but it is already way too much. A cap would not be much help.
    I am fortunate to have developed other income, I have no idea how some of the others my age manage. A lot of family homes get sold by people who can’t afford to keep them anymore. Some move away, some downsize.

  • justMe

    #7 Old Timer- I just got an e-mail that said basically the same thing, except that it was signed by Al Hoffman. I thought you might find the following article from snopes.com interesting:
    http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/dividend.asp
    We would only get $425 not $425,000.

  • Old Timer

    I know, the math is wrong, but the concept is beautful. If you take the 700 billion and divide it 200 million times, each person gets 3500, and that’s not bad. A long way from $425 thousand, but a big help for a lot of people. Sending the money to Main St, instead of Wall St, still sounds good to me. I can’t help worrying about taxpayer’s money going to golden paracutes for people who caused this mess. I have a friend who served on a bank board for a number of years and he insists the Clinton administration got us into this mess. Apparently, he believes bad mortgages written then are the ones in trouble now.

  • Anonymous

    #14- Your friend is correct–and we have to clean up the mess.

  • Anonymous

    #14- you’re kidding. So the untold numbers of bad mortgages written in the last eight years aren’t included in your friend’s thinking? Maybe he should take a more unbiased look at the situation.

    I would bet that the number of questionable mortgage products created and written since the GOP took over would far, far outweigh those that might be contributing to the meltdown which were written prior during the Clinton administration.

  • Diane C: Dari-end?

    Darien CT cited in BusinessWeek article as town most likely to be hardest hit by financial crisis:
    “Topping the list is Darien, Conn., an affluent New York suburb where the median salary is $168,000 and 27% of residents work in those industries.”
    “Hitting Connecticut Commuters”
    ‘John Tirinzonie, Connecticut’s state labor economist, wasn’t surprised to see that Darien topped the list. The Wall Street crisis puts stress on commuters in affluent Fairfield County, which includes Darien, Westport, New Canaan, Stamford, and Greenwich (home of former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld), he said.’

    Hmm, notice that the state labor economist does not mention NORWALK when referencing “affluent Fairfield County”, only Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, New Canaan, and Westport. Jumped right over us, did he?

    full text: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/sep2008/bw20080925_757510.htm

  • Anonymous

    I can’t say that I have a heck of a lot of sympathy for the fat cats in any of those towns who are losing their shirts as this plays out. Frankly, we could do without all those Mercedes, Jaguars, Hummers and Beamers clogging up the roads, and when all those foreclosed McMansions are torn down, there will be lots of space for the condo complexes and affordable housing that Darien and the other richy-rich-rich towns will need to house their brand-new working poor.

    Tsk, tsk, tsk. Looky what greed’ll getcha.