People opposing the efforts to prevent economic collapse?

[techs]

Are they just so blinded by the erroneous belief that any interference in the "free market" is wrong? Are they opposed to the cost? Are they hoping for the economic collapse the neo-cons have said is necessary to end government spending?

Fact.
There is no "free market". If it really was a free market than owners of the bankrupt companies would owe the companies debts. Instead they are protected by the "socialist" invention of corporations. Of course, if everyone was liable for the debts of the companies they owned, they might have made sure the companies didn't act irresponsibley.

Fact.
As it is the stock market, despite 7 years of huge tax cuts and deficit spending, is below what it was in 1999. Without the proposed bailout it may go down to 7 or 8 thousand. Wiping out the wealth and retirement savings of TENS of millions of Americans.

Fact.
The economic difficulties were caused by the Republican policies enacted under Bush and the overwhelming Republican majority. Well regulated markets would not be in the position they are in. Do they oppose government intervention because it proves it was Republican mismanagement?

Fact.
The Democrats and some Republicans have drastically altered the Bush proposals. Now they are much more limited. And they actually re-establish some of the controls the Bushies eliminated, which caused the crisis. Are the opposers under the belief the Bush plan as he laid it out is what is actually going to happen?

 

[Craig234]

As The Shock Doctrine documents well, we should keep a very close eye on any big new programs pushed through ijn time of crisis.

I'm not exert to say what the right solutoion is, but I do know who I'd trust more to do the right things, and it's not the soon to be out of government long-time veteran and CEO of Goldman Sachs with a trillion taxpayer dollars, in an admnistration which is all about redistributing wealth from the tax base to the top.

I do think that the finance industry has gotten so powerful as to not have much accountability to the public, and that it's greatly ale to have abusive policies. Their huge desire to get their hands on the Social Security program led to thah privatization - which would increase the administrative costs to an estimated 300% of what they are now - the Bush dministration's second term #1 domestic priority - though he was blocked.

I'd like to see this raree chance to get some control over Wall Street taken advantage of.

 

[synapsetx]

Paulson and Bernanke should have been thrown out of the Congressional hearing regarding this and their proposal ripped up in front of them.
- They have no quality evidence to demonstrate why the $700 billion was necessary
- The "no review by court of law" item was just terrifyingly stupid
- The sole authority of the Sec. of Treas provision was downright monomaniacal.

Between those three it was so close to a 1930's Hitler document, there is no way in hell they should have ever considered it. Those two bozos should have been ripped apart by the Congress then tossed in the street to come back with something resembling a SANE response.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: synapsetx
Paulson and Bernanke should have been thrown out of the Congressional hearing regarding this and their proposal ripped up in front of them.
- They have no quality evidence to demonstrate why the $700 billion was necessary
- The "no review by court of law" item was just terrifyingly stupid
- The sole authority of the Sec. of Treas provision was downright monomaniacal.

Between those three it was so close to a 1930's Hitler document, there is no way in hell they should have ever considered it. Those two bozos should have been ripped apart by the Congress then tossed in the street to come back with something resembling a SANE response.

Is it just me who has thought that one condition of the program perhapps should be a new person, who the democrats trust too, to adminster any program, not Paulson?

 

[nageov3t]

Originally posted by: Craig234

we should keep a very close eye on any big new programs pushed through in time of crisis.

:thumbsup:

 

[Pliablemoose]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: synapsetx
Paulson and Bernanke should have been thrown out of the Congressional hearing regarding this and their proposal ripped up in front of them.
- They have no quality evidence to demonstrate why the $700 billion was necessary
- The "no review by court of law" item was just terrifyingly stupid
- The sole authority of the Sec. of Treas provision was downright monomaniacal.

Between those three it was so close to a 1930's Hitler document, there is no way in hell they should have ever considered it. Those two bozos should have been ripped apart by the Congress then tossed in the street to come back with something resembling a SANE response.

Is it just me who has thought that one condition of the program perhapps should be a new person, who the democrats trust too, to adminster any program, not Paulson?

I heard Bloomberg's name floated last week...

If we have to do this shit we need a "Czar" position.

Perhaps a "War on the Economy" is in order...

 

[DerekWilson]

Bush did a good job of tricking republicans into believing that he is one.

Actually, the neo-cons did a good job of convincing republicans that they are republicans ...

Now we're so in the shit that republicans who used to know better think they agree with ignorance and ideas that spit in the face of republicanism.

See these guys if you want to know what true conservatives in the republican party would want to do ...

http://www.rlc.org/

... I disagree with the bailout because it only straps a bandaid on a broken system that will eventually collapse if presidents keep doing what Bush has been doing and congresses keep doing what congress has been doing (and I don't think that's a problem with republicanism, I think it's a problem with the republicans being fooled into thinking that the people running for office as republicans actually are).

Real change needs to be made, not this piddling shit.

 

[Modelworks]

Its just after being lied to so many times by the government and after the Iraq war fiasco people are having a hard time believing anything the government tells them, especially when it is sold to them as "We need to do this now in a hurry and with no oversight in place"

 

[BansheeX]

Originally posted by: techs
Are they just so blinded by the erroneous belief that any interference in the "free market" is wrong? Are they opposed to the cost? Are they hoping for the economic collapse the neo-cons have said is necessary to end government spending?

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, there are neo-cons at the forefront of this bill. Only die-hard libertarians are saying that this perpetual rationale of having to avoid a painful correction and reallocation of the markets, that was used in 2000 when the tech stocks blew up, is in reality making the problems worse as we go and pushing them off to a later date. FACT: if we had pulled up our boots and had a recession in 2000 after the inflationary bubble of the 90s, none of this crap would be happening today. But Bush, like any politician, didn't want that to happen in his first term, because it would make him a one-term president.

Fact.
There is no "free market". If it really was a free market than owners of the bankrupt companies would owe the companies debts. Instead they are protected by the "socialist" invention of corporations. Of course, if everyone was liable for the debts of the companies they owned, they might have made sure the companies didn't act irresponsibley.

Yep, not to mention about a thousand other socialist interventions that have been building up for quite some time. The government has long been price fixing interest rates, subsidizing in one place and not the other, bailing out one place and not the other, implementing an income tax and then handing out tax credits to one place and not the other, departing from a free-market determined money (gold). The whole risk/reward system that makes an economy sustainably function has been perverted, the so many anti-competitive enablements exist in government for businesses to collude with it's not even funny.

Fact.
As it is the stock market, despite 7 years of huge tax cuts and deficit spending, is below what it was in 1999. Without the proposed bailout it may go down to 7 or 8 thousand. Wiping out the wealth and retirement savings of TENS of millions of Americans.

Tax cuts are meaningless if government merely borrows and inflates more to make up for the lost influx in taxes. Too bad when anyone suggests actual spending reductions, they get labeled as a radical.

Fact.
The economic difficulties were caused by the Republican policies enacted under Bush and the overwhelming Republican majority. Well regulated markets would not be in the position they are in. Do they oppose government intervention because it proves it was Republican mismanagement?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the biggest mistake Democrats are making right now. Clinton may have done a slightly better job than Bush, but total national debt never decreased any year under Clinton. The "growth" of the 90s was an illusory bubble in tech stocks that imploded and should have caused a recession in 2000. Greenspan price fixed interest rates down to 1% for a whole year, filtering that inflation into real estate. It's only now finally coming home to roost in basic commodities like food and fuel and materials where people don't want it to show up, and it bankrupted pretty much every fractional reserve bank who loaned out its depositors money on mortgages that weren't worth the collateral. The way government calculated how much it is inflating was also changed under Clinton, resulting in these goofy GDP figures we have today which say inflation is running at 1.2% annually, so that GDP says we're never in a recession no matter what's actually happening in the real world.

And if you're so damned convinced and short-sighted and blindly loyal to your party, do some research on history. LBJ was a democrat and he sent 50,000 Americans to die in a godforsaken jungle for diddly squat, and it cost so much that our debt to foreigners exceeded gold reserves by 1971, so Nixon got a podium and scratched the gold backing on the reserve currency of the world. Democrats passed the Federal Reserve Act, opposed by most Republicans at the time. Then FDR took a recessionary bust from 20s inflation and turned it into a fifteen year death spiral that didn't end until after he died four terms later. The Smoot-Holly tariff thing didn't help either. He showed absolutely no constitutional restraint, confiscated private property from every poor and frightened American, started the SS ponzi scheme, nationalized industry, absolved the banks, allowed Pearl Harbor to be a massacre. I mean, what else do you want to know?

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: BansheeX
Tax cuts are meaningless if government merely borrows and inflates more to make up for the lost influx in taxes. Too bad when anyone suggests actual spending reductions, they get labeled as a radical.

They are not labeled as radicals for suggesting spending reductions. They get labeled as radicals because of how they wish to make it happen. There are many effective ways to skin the cat. A lot of people have a hard time looking past the spending side of a solution and forget about the other problems which arise as a result of that solution. If this were easy then it would have been solved already. It is not just simply cutting spending so that the numbers match up.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: DerekWilson
Bush did a good job of tricking republicans into believing that he is one.

Actually, the neo-cons did a good job of convincing republicans that they are republicans ...

Now we're so in the shit that republicans who used to know better think they agree with ignorance and ideas that spit in the face of republicanism.

See these guys if you want to know what true conservatives in the republican party would want to do ...

http://www.rlc.org/

... I disagree with the bailout because it only straps a bandaid on a broken system that will eventually collapse if presidents keep doing what Bush has been doing and congresses keep doing what congress has been doing (and I don't think that's a problem with republicanism, I think it's a problem with the republicans being fooled into thinking that the people running for office as republicans actually are).

Real change needs to be made, not this piddling shit.

You have it backwards. The people who selected and backed Bush created a marketing program to recruit people to vote Repbublican - you are the ones who were tricked by the 'real Republicans'. The Republican voters - the ones who thought the party is about 'avoiding excessive government, protecting personal freedom' and such - have not been in the driver's seat, so who are the 'real Republicans'?

The party has for a century been about serving the interests of the wealthy as its main 'real' agenda, whatever it does to get votes.

Bush had his responsibility: to get the millions of voters who imaging having beers with their president and want the type who resembles a NASCAR racer in his flight suit landing on the carrier and making snarky insults at 'liberals' to get their votes, and to let the agenda of the rich be enacted. He's done damn well for them, with a trillion in tax cuts for the rich, even while he did not get social security in the hands of Wall Street.

The Republican Party is a conglomeration - 'small government' people, the Religious Right, the wealthy who actually largely control it, the redneck crowd and many others - each of whom gets some level of 'pandering'. Take its #1 donor industry, big pharma - they got the Medicare drug bill with $150 billion on a platter by the Republicans prohibiting the government from any discounts on drugs.

I'm sorry, but when I see people talk about being 'betrayed', it's not as if you weren't warned in 2000 and 2004, and you did not listen. You are part of the problem.

The danger now is for you to convince people that Bush isn't a 'real Republican' and to get people to vote Republican *again* - they need you to let them fool you again.

 

[evident]

godwins law wins again!

 

[MustISO]

I'm totally against the bailout the way it was being proposed. IMO they don't have any idea what they're doing they just want to throw money at the problem at hope it goes away. I 100% that something needs to be done but I have 0% confidence that anyone in the Bush administration or Congress has any idea of how to do it correctly. This problem started a year ago, they've had plenty of time to come up with a solution and now it's panic time. It's quite possible this will be a bigger mistake than the war and certainly handled just as poorly.