The Big Disconnect

From Hollywood’s Brilliant Coda to America’s Dark Year by Frank Rich:

Those at the top are separated from the consequences of their actions. They are exemplified by Robert Rubin, formerly of Citigroup and a mentor to both Obama’s Treasury secretary and chief economic adviser. He looked the other way when his bank made ruinous high-risk bets, and then cashed out and split, leaving taxpayers to pay for the wreckage while he escaped any accountability. Such economic wise men peer down at the country from a hermetically sealed bubble of privilege and self-interest, much as Ryan does from the plane flying him to his next mass firing. And they tend to think, as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs notoriously put it, that they are doing “God’s work” to sustain our free-market system.

From Comment Number 10 by Dim:

First of all, let me say thank you for such an insightful description of our current state of affairs, Mr. Rich, for pointing out so beautifully the disconnect between Wall Street and the rest of the country. President Obama also mentioned this in his weekly address today, but what bothers me is that, unlike you, he could actually do something about it! He keeps saying the right things but why doesn't he lead more forcefully? Why doesn't he keep up the pressure on Wall Street and on the Congress? Why doesn't he keep politicians of both parties accountable when they look after the interests of Wall Street and not the people? I know he has a lot on his plate, but I hope he is listening to people like you and taking these warnings a little bit more seriously. And I think that journalists like yourself should keep pressure on the President, keep him accountable for his actions instead of giving him a pass for simply saying the right things.

Meanwhile, most of the pundits effectively divide us so that the super rich and powerful can conquer us. As Bill Moyers frequently says, it’s not a question of left and right, it’s a question of top and bottom. (“…populism isn't really- and people's power, isn't really a left or right issue, is it? It's more us versus them, bottom versus top?”)

Numbers

From Math Wizards Working on Spells to 'Cure' by Scott Patterson:

The financial engineers are at it again.

Critics may complain that these math wizards started the trouble in the first place by designing securities that couldn't withstand the market's turbulence. But they also may have the expertise to help fix the problem.

"Airplanes fail, too," says Peter Cotton, founder of Julius Finance, a structured-finance firm in New York. "That doesn't mean you don't fix them."

Mr. Cotton is one of many such engineers trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem before the government: how to design a system for buying up assets shunted into a massive "bad bank." The government doesn't want to pay too much and banks don't want to sell for too little.

Mr. Cotton says the models most banks and ratings firms used to price CDOs were poorly designed. "They are superficial," he says, and "often spit out prices that don't capture the underlying value of the assets."

Using those same failed models now, says Mr. Cotton, most banks are "essentially just making up numbers."

Bailing And Stimulating

Put simply, I think that I am more in favor of stimulus and less in favor of bailouts. Sometimes I wonder if the news media even bothers to make any distinctions between the two. It also seems to me that the Republicans are more in favor of bailouts and less in favor of stimulus.

From Sen. Graham on the Stimulus: 'This Bill Stinks ... We're Not Being Smart'

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. We only have about 45 seconds left. Is this going to pass? I mean, the president has -- there are a lot of Democrats in the Senate and the House.

GRAHAM: I think...

VAN SUSTEREN: They own the two houses.

GRAHAM: If we can make sure that Republicans will insist on a better process, where Republicans ideas are heard, there are enough Republicans that will meet Democrats in a responsible way to get a spending bill that cuts -- a bill that cuts taxes and spends on infrastructure and help people who (are) out of a job. If this bill passes, I think the Obama administration has governed completely different than the way they campaigned, and the Democratic Congress will be reinforcing the public's view of them in a very bad way. We can do better. I want a bipartisan bill, not this bill.

VAN SUSTEREN: And so if this passes, you're going to get a bumper sticker that says, "Don't blame me."

Republican ideas have been forced down our throats for what seems like an eternity. As far as the economy goes, make that idea, rather than ideas. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts… Other than tax cuts and obstructionism and whining, what are the Republicans offering? What are the great ideas that they want people to listen to?

Stimulus Response Behaviour

From Idaho Republican thinks he woke up in 'Bizarro World' by David Neiwert:

Republicans are having a tough time dealing with the realities of not having even a shred of remaining power. There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth the past few days as Democrats have proceeded to impose their political will in the form of Barack Obama's economic stimulus package.

Meanwhile, what seems to have him (Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho) most irate is that America is no longer a "center right" nation and we are moving forward to fix our problems with progressive solutions. All Mike Simpson and his fellow Republicans had to offer as an alternative was more of the same old garbage that wreaked this mess in the first place -- tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, and oh did we mention tax cuts?

From Ownership by digby:

The Republicans are hedging their bets. They want to be able to use the stimulus as a bludgeon (just think of the pork stories!) and want to be on record against it for 2010. But just in case the pointy headed economists are right, they do need to take care of their rich benefactors. If America's owners really didn't want this to pass they would have twisted some corporate Democrats' arms. (Conversely, if they really wanted it to be bipartisan, they would have twisted some Republicans' arms.)

The Gross Bust

From How We Can Restore Confidence by Charles T. Munger:

Our situation is dire. Moderate booms and busts are inevitable in free-market capitalism. But a boom-bust cycle as gross as the one that caused our present misery is dangerous, and recurrences should be prevented. The country is understandably depressed -- mired in issues involving fiscal stimulus, which is needed, and improvements in bank strength. A key question: Should we opt for even more pain now to gain a better future? For instance, should we create new controls to stamp out much sin and folly and thus dampen future booms? The answer is yes.

Sensible reform cannot avoid causing significant pain, which is worth enduring to gain extra safety and more exemplary conduct. And only when there is strong public revulsion, such as exists today, can legislators minimize the influence of powerful special interests enough to bring about needed revisions in law.

Read more here.

Stimulating Thoughts

From Wanted: Personal Economic Trainers. Apply at Capitol. by Steven Pearlstein:

Equally specious is the oft-heard complaint that even some of the immediate spending is not stimulative.

"This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan," Nebraska's freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, "won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy."

Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.

And then there is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), complaining in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that of the 3 million jobs that the stimulus package might create or save, one in five will be government jobs, as if there is something inherently inferior or unsatisfactory about that. (Note to Coburn's political director: One in five workers in Oklahoma is employed by government.)

In the next day's Journal, Coburn won additional support for his theory that public-sector employment and output is less worthy than private-sector output from columnist Daniel Henninger. Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn't being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending.

Spending is stimulus, no matter what it's for and who does it. The best spending is that which creates jobs and economic activity now, has big payoffs later and disappears from future budgets.

Greenspan's Fraud

From Greenspan's Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy by Thom Hartmann:

Former Bush Junior Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recounts how Dick Cheney famously said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Cheney was either ignorant or being disingenuous - it would be more accurate to say, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter if you rip off the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for them, and don't report that borrowing from the Boomers as part of the deficit."

Ravi Batra's book "Greenspan's Fraud" is not only required reading for all Americans because it so clearly lays out the crimes this man - and the Republican Party - have committed against the United States of America, but also because it's such a brilliant primer in macroeconomics overall. If you never were able to figure out, for example, what interest rates had to do with unemployment, or how the rich get richer in America while the poor get poorer, or why when the minimum wage is increased the economy gets better, Batra explains it all with elegance, wit, and comfortable clarity.

Don't Be Distracted By Those Shiny Republicans

It’s the slime that makes them so shiny.

From It's the Stupid, Stupid by Josh Marshall:

The campaign isn't over. November 5th was just a big hurdle. The arguments still have to be made for the direction we want to take the country. We need the big picture or we'll run again on distractions and the efforts of discredited malefactors.

Here’s an example of an utterly stupid distraction and waste of taxpayers money:


From What GOP Leaders deem wasteful in Senate stimulus bill:

On Monday, House Republican leaders put out a list of what they call wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

The Republicans seem to be in favor of pollution, global warming, terrorists, more pollution, sexual transmitted diseases, water and soil pollution, stupid/ignorant people, and more terrorists. Not to mention petty partisan bickering while the rest of the country goes down and down into the abyss.

Look at that list again. Why is money that would go to construction jobs, computer manufactures, federal employees who help keep us safe, auto manufacturers, engineers, and health professionals a bad thing? We need people to be working. All except these dimwitted Republican Congresspeople. Let's fire them.

Why is it OK to send money to Wall Street but not anywhere else?

Reflexivity

From The credit crunch according to Soros by Chrystia Freeland:

His core idea is “reflexivity”, which he defines as a “two-way feedback loop, between the participants’ views and the actual state of affairs. People base their decisions not on the actual situation that confronts them, but on their perception or interpretation of the situation. Their decisions make an impact on the situation and changes in the situation are liable to change their perceptions.”

It is, at its root, a case for frequent re-examination of one’s assumptions about the world and for a readiness to spot and exploit moments of cataclysmic change – those times when our perceptions of events and events themselves are likely to interact most fiercely. It is also at odds with the rational expectations economic school, which has been the prevailing orthodoxy in recent decades. That approach assumed that economic players – from people buying homes to bankers buying subprime mortgages for their portfolios – were rational actors making, in aggregate, the best choices for themselves and that free markets were effective mechanisms for balancing supply and demand, setting prices correctly and tending towards equilibrium.

The rational expectations theory has taken a beating over the past 18 months: its intellectual nadir was probably October 23 2008, when Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, admitted to Congress that there was “a flaw in the model”. Soros argues that the “market fundamentalism” of Greenspan and his ilk, especially their assumption that “financial markets are self-correcting”, was an important cause of the current crisis. It befuddled policy-makers and was the intellectual basis for the “various synthetic instruments and valuation models” which contributed mightily to the crash.

By contrast, Soros sees the current crisis as a real-life illustration of reflexivity. Markets did not reflect an objective “truth”. Rather, the beliefs of market participants – that house prices would always rise, that an arcane financial instrument based on a subprime mortgage really could merit a triple-A rating – created a new reality. Ultimately, that “super-bubble” was unsustainable, hence the credit crunch of 2007 and the recession and financial crisis of 2008 and beyond.

…Soros attributes his effectiveness as an investor to his philosophical views about the contingent nature of human knowledge: “I think that my conceptual framework, which basically emphasises the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions … I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.”

Read more here.

Off Center

From Fetishizing off-center centrism by Jamison Foser:

From the way the media have covered this week's stimulus package vote, you would think the goal of the legislation was to get Democrats and Republicans to sit together for lunch in the House cafeteria, rather than to turn around an economy in free fall.

After the House passed the stimulus package by a comfortable margin, much of the media reacted not by examining the bill's contents and the likelihood that it would provide a much-needed boost to the economy, but by focusing on the fact that it passed without a single Republican vote.

Why the GOP's unanimity in opposing the stimulus package should be surprising is anybody's guess; the last time we had a newly elected Democratic president, in 1993, congressional Republicans were unanimous in opposing his economic package, too. Then-Rep. John Kasich went so far as to promise that if Bill Clinton's plan worked, Kasich would switch parties. (It did; he didn't.) Point being: Congressional Republicans do not have a strong track record of working with Democratic presidents in recent memory. Perhaps because they were too busy trying to subpoena the White House cat.

Nonetheless, the Democrats' purported failure to get Republican support for the bill was, according to many reporters, the story.

Read the rest here.

Stuff Happens

I have no idea what the solution is to our current financial and economic problems. However, I don’t think that tax cuts for the wealthy are the solution, and I don’t think that giving money to the people who screwed up in the first place is the solution. I do think that lowering the pay of CEO’s while raising the pay of workers who are lower down on the pay scale would help. What most people need more than anything else are good paying jobs. Anything that the government can do to help with that seems to me to be the best solution. The government should stop favoring the rich and screwing the poor.

From Bad Faith Economics by Paul Krugman:

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

I like this comment from Dave to Bad Faith Economics by Paul Krugman:

Look, I know I didn't win the Nobel Prize, but it seems to me that two points have never been satisfactorily addressed by Krugman and his fellow travelers:

(1) Too much debt and spending is what created this mess. Now we're supposed to do the same, only more, to get us OUT of the mess? What happens when the stimulus is gone? Maybe we'll have sparkling infrastructure, but will we have a sustainable economy? I think the last thing we need is more stimulation. Do we give alcoholics even more alcohol to cure them?

(2) Since we, as a nation, don't have $1 trillion laying around, we either need to borrow or print, right? Re: borrowing, see my first point. Plus, how do we know the rest of the world will even lend us another $1 trillion or more? And, if we end up printing, well, how's that going to work? If printing was a solution, every country in Africa would be a wealthy paradise.

I think Americans are beginning to realize that they are a lot poorer than previously believed. This stimulus won't change that. At best, it will just delay the inevitable and make it worse when it arrives.

Update:
Wouldn’t we be in better shape if less things were broken? Wall Street and the banking system are broken, but our news media and our government are also broken. Wouldn’t it be better if the government was able to provide safety nets for those who need one? Wouldn’t a better welfare system actually be something that is useful to many people right now? (Thank you, Bill Clinton.)

Church Attendance Is Flat

My guess is that the local bar, pub, and tavern has seen an increase in attendance.

From Poll Finds No Boost in Church Attendance during Economic Crisis by Audrey Barrick:

While tens of thousands of Americans have been laid off in recent months and religious leaders have blamed corporate greed for the economic crisis, churches have not seen a jump in attendance numbers as many might have expected, according to a new poll.

Over the last three months, about 42 percent of Americans reported that they attended church, synagogue, or mosque weekly or almost every week, which the Gallup Poll found to be the same percentage reported earlier in the year.

History has shown that a significant crisis usually results in fuller pews, as was seen after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. During this latest crisis of economic challenges, some reports have indicated that houses of worship have drawn larger crowds.

But while some churches have seen higher numbers, the recent Gallup Poll found "absolutely no change" in church attendance after reviewing almost 300,000 interviews Gallup conducted throughout this year.

Read the rest here.

"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose"

Why does so much of the talk about fixing the economy take a top-down approach, instead of a bottom-up approach? In other words why are we talking so much about corporate welfare, while so many people think that welfare for the poor is a dirty word?

Do the rich really need more money? How much worse can things get for someone who is already poor and homeless? The middle class and the poor have suffered through an economic crisis for years, and the government didn’t care and did nothing to help them. Instead they helped corporations ship jobs overseas. However, when an economic crisis starts to effect the rich the government is ready to give them billions of dollars. Something is wrong with this picture.

From Guest Blogger: Michael Zweig's Proposal for Economic Stimulus:

We set out to design an economic stimulus package that would provide direct relief to distressed workers while bringing the economy towards full employment. But we found that, as important as job creation is, most distressed workers have jobs – just not good ones. So in addition to short-term stimulus we propose longer-term structural reforms that provide universal health care and make it much easier for workers to organize unions.

For the past 35 years we have lived through one of the greatest redistributions of wealth away from working people to the corporate elite that this country has ever seen. Worker productivity has gone up while wages adjusted for inflation have gone down. That’s what class warfare looks like, and the working class has been on the losing side for almost two generations.

When we criticize the increasing inequality around us and call for economic justice, others denounce such talk as “class warfare.” But the complaint is itself part of the war, designed to change the subject. A market economy can produce great wealth, but what’s the point if the working people who create it don’t live better for it?

$8.5 Trillion

We pay a lot of people a lot of money to prevent things like this. Lots of economists, lots of politicians, lots of talking heads. Fat lot of good they do us. Maybe they all should be fired.

From Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion by Jim Puzzanghera:

Reporting from Washington -- With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government eliminated any doubt that the nation is on a wartime footing in the battle to shore up the economy. The strategy now -- and in the coming Obama administration -- is essentially the win-at-any-cost approach previously adopted only to wage a major war.

And that means no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since World War II.

A Short John McCain Timeline

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” John McCain - November, 2007

“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.” John McCain - December 17, 2007

“I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession, I believe the fundamentals of this economy are strong and I believe they will remain strong.” John McCain - January 30, 2008

"I think we are better off overall if you look at the entire eight-year period, when you look at the millions of jobs that have been created, the improvement in the economy, et cetera.” John McCain - January 30, 2008

"You know that there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street. And it is, it's - people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong but these are very, very difficult times.” John McCain - September 15, 2008

“America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system. We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees. If we do not act, every corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.” John McCain - September 24, 2008

“I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people.” John McCain - September 24, 2008

He doesn't know what he's doing, but he's going to do something.

McCain admits that economics is not his strong suit, flip-flops on his assessment of the economy, and now wants us to trust him to be able to fix everything wrong with the economy. How logical is that?

McCain’s campaign is not the only thing that has been suspended.

Do you have a favorite John McCain quote about the economy? Feel free to comment and add it to the list.

A Pit Bull Perhaps?

From Would You Believe ...? by Josh Marshall:

One of the advantages of running a presidential campaign is that roughly half the country is deeply committed to believing or at least saying that virtually anything you do or say makes sense. And so it is here. But, look, if you were living in the real world, if you were some hotshot young executive at a Fortune 500 company trying to rise in the ranks, and you pulled some whacked crap like this, it would probably get you blackballed permanently. People would think you were either deeply unreliable or maybe just had a screw loose. And yet here he is -- is he kidding? He can't debate Barack Obama because he's got to go to Washington and save the economy? It's like the biggest 'dog at my homework' in history.

Marcy Kaptur For President!

Screw Obama! Screw McCain! I want Marcy Kaptur to be president.

THE LATEST REALITY GAME--WALL STREET BAILOUT -- (House of Representatives - September 22, 2008):

Mr. Speaker, here is the latest reality game. Let's play Wall Street Bailout.

Rule one: Rush the decision. Time the game to fall in the week before Congress is set to adjourn and just 6 weeks before an historic election so your opponents will be preoccupied, pressured, distracted, and in a hurry.

Rule two: Disarm the public through fear. Warn that the entire global financial system will collapse and the world will fall into another Great Depression. Control the media enough to ensure that the public will not notice this.

Bailout will indebt them for generations, taking from them trillions of dollars they earned and deserve to keep.

Rule three: Control the playing field and set the rules. Hide from the public and most of the Congress just who is arranging this deal. Communicate with the public through leaks to media insiders. Limit any open congressional hearings. Communicate with Congress via private teleconferencing calls. Heighten political anxiety by contacting each political party separately. Treat Members of Congress condescendingly, telling them that the matter is so complex that they must rely on those few insiders who really do know what's going on.

Rule four: Divert attention and keep people confused. Manage the news cycle so Congress and the public have no time to examine who destroyed the prudent banking system that served America so well for 60 years after the financial meltdown of the 1920s.

Rule five: Always keep in mind the goal is to privatize gains to a few and socialize loss to the many. For 30 years in one financial scandal after another, Wall Street game masters have kept billions of dollars of their gain and shifted their losses to American taxpayers. Once this bailout is in place, the greed game will begin again.

But I have a counter-game. It's called Wall Street Reckoning. Congress shouldn't go home to campaign. It should put America's accounts in order.

To Wall Street insiders, it says ``no'' on behalf of the American people. You have perpetrated the greatest financial crimes ever on this American republic. You think you can get by with it because you are extraordinarily wealthy and the largest contributors to both Presidential and congressional campaigns in both major parties, but you are about to be brought under firm control.

First, America doesn't need to bail you out, it needs to secure the real assets and property, not your paper, that means the homes and properties of hardworking Americans who are about to lose their homes because of your mortgage greed. There should be a new job for regional Federal Reserve Banks. We want no home foreclosed if a serious work-out agreement can be put into place. And if you don't do it, we want a notarized statement by a Federal Reserve official that they tried and failed.

Second, taxpayers should directly gain any equity benefits that may flow from this historic bailout. We want the American people to get first priority in taking ownership of the institutions that want to pass their toxic paper onto the taxpayers.

Third, before any bailouts for Wall Street, America needs major job creation to rebuild our major infrastructure. America needs assets, not paper. We need working assets.

Fourth, the time for real financial regulatory change is now, not next year. A modernized Glass Eagle Act must be put in place. We need to reestablish locally-owned community savings banks across this country and create within the Justice Department a fully funded unit to prosecute every single high-flying thief whose fraud and criminal acts created this debacle and then forced their disgorgement of assets going back 15 years.

Fifth, any refinancing must return a major share of profits to a new Social Security and Medicare lockbox, where the monies can go to pay for a dignified and assured retirement for every American. This Member isn't voting for a penny of it. Those who created and profited from this game of games must be brought to justice. The assets they stole must be returned to the American taxpayers, right down to the tires on their Mercedes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring my bill to create an independent commission to investigate these well-heeled wrongdoers. Real reform now, or nothing.

Update:
She’s On Fire:

"Let these companies die"

From Mad as hell - taxpayers lash out by David Goldman:

"NO NO NO. Not just no, but HELL NO," writes Richard, a reader from Anchorage, Alaska.

"This is robbery pure and simple," Anna from Denver posted on CNNMoney.com's TalkBack blog this weekend.

"It's our money! Let these companies die," added Claudio from Plainville, Conn.

After President Bush petitioned Congress Saturday for the authority to spend up to $700 billion to to bail out a financial industry on the verge of collapse, he said the high price tag was not only justified, but essential.

"It is a big package because it's a big problem," Bush told reporters at a news conference. "The risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package."

But when asked what they thought of the government's proposal, most readers gave an overwhelming thumbs down.

"I'm tired of rewarding institutions and people for the bad decisions they have made," said Dean from Madison, Wis. "Sure, it will hurt tax payers if/when some of these institutions fail, but perhaps we need to let that happen. We do not need more big government involved in our lives. Enough is enough."

Don't hand me the tab

Readers focused most of their indignation on having to foot the bill for irresponsible lenders and borrowers.

Read the rest here.

This one is my favorite:

And John from Springfield, Va., said the government action actually hurts the people it is intended to help.

"The government does not have $700 billion dollars. WE have $700 billion, and it is being taken from us. If this is passed then the next administration and the next will be extracting this one from the people who are supposedly being protected by this bailout."

An Incompetent Buffoon

From Wall Street Journal blasts John McCain by Jack Cafferty:

When you graduate 894th out of a class of 899, eventually it will show up.

And John McCain’s mediocre performance at the Naval Academy is showing up big time this week in his total lack of understanding of the nation’s financial crisis.

He told us he didn’t know much about the economy… now he’s proving it.

So much so that the Wall Street Journal, perhaps America’s leading financial publication, is blasting McCain over what its editorial board sees as inaccurate and, “unpresidential” comments about the crisis in America’s financial system.

If you’re a Republican running for president of the United States and the Wall Street Journal basically says you’re an incompetent buffoon, you’re in serious trouble.

Read the rest here.

You Fail, We Bail

Wasn’t what the government did concerning Bear Stearns supposed to stop the imminent collapse of the financial empire? For too long now the fear card has been played. “They” told us that if the government didn’t step in and throw some money around the house of cards would fall. And it will trickle down and effect YOU. Why can't the government come up with a better motivator than fear? Time and time again the government has stepped in and thrown unprecedented amounts of money around, and the house of cards is still falling down. Couldn’t they have saved a lot of money by simply doing nothing? I personally don’t care if all the investment banks fail. They don’t have any of my money. I don’t have enough to put any there. They cater to the rich and powerful. Let the rich and powerful deal with this mess. Leave the average American taxpayer out of it.

From Looks Like I Spoke Too Soon by Jeffrey Stingerstein:

No sooner does the federal government show some sensibility by not bailing out a failing company, then it shows its stupidity once again by bailing out yet another company. What the hell is wrong with our government? One bailout after another using tax payer money and it isn’t getting us anything. Is it getting us a sound economy? No! It’s getting us a delayed crash. All these bailouts are leading to one thing, more irresponsible and risky behavior by already imprudent businessmen. First these guys get tax cuts, now they get bailouts. Why not just hand them the US Treasury Department and say, “Hey, take whatever you need. We’ll just borrow more from our enemies over in China.” This is getting utterly ridiculous and I can’t imagine how this could possible be doing anything good for our economy in the long run. What a lesson to learn! You fail, we bail you out!