Oh joyous day! The Congress--working throughout the weekend--has come up with a negotiated bail-out bill to address the current financial crisis. Democrats led by Barney Frank on the House side worked hand-in-hand with Treasury Secretary Paulson to "fix" the original 3 page Paulson demand for unfettered power over $700 billion to now include some oversight and help for homeowners in danger of foreclosure.
But the question remains: is this a good bill that deserves progressives' support, or just the best they could do given where they started?
(more interesting thoughts on the economy, Part II... - promoted by poligirl)
Robert Scheer calls it what it is "Financial Facism".
http://www.thenation.com/doc/2... In an article for The Nation, columnist Robert Scheer calls the "bail out" is akin to what Mussolini did in Italy. Mussolini called the merger of corporations and government, fascism.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., condemned Paulson's proposal as an effort to "take Wall Street's pain and spread it to the taxpayers." He added, "It's financial socialism and it's un-American."
He's wrong on that last point, for what is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism." After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst.
Smell a rat if Congress approves the Paulson plan without severely curtailing CEO pay and putting a freeze on the mortgage foreclosures that are threatening to destroy the homes of millions of Americans.
(some interesting thoughts on the economy, Part I... - promoted by poligirl)
Dean Baker writes on TPMcafe.com http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsme... that the basic element in this crisis is "trust". These guys knew that this was a bubble. They knew that what they were doing was a huge Ponzi scheme. Alan Greenspan was being knighted by the Queen of England back when the non fundamentalist economists like Dean Baker were warning of the coming debacle. So now mistake after mistake later, none of these people in charge or the ones making millions off this meltdown should be listened to, let alone given money to spread around.
Unless the conditions are written in stone, for example specific rules that limit executive compensation using the same type of language that CEOs use when they sign contracts with their companies, there is no reason for the public to believe that they will get a fair deal in this bailout. The public should also demand that some genuine outsiders, representatives of labor, consumer groups and other non-Wall Street segments of society, have a direct oversight role in this deal.
Instead of seeing Obama surrounded by bankers like ex Fed chairman Paul Volker and ex Goldman Sachs now Citigroup former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin last Friday, I wish Barack Obama had been huddled with Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers, James Hoffa of the teamsters, Naomi Klein author of "The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Wolfe, "The End of America" , Nomi Prins, "Other People's Money" and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.
