By affixing his signature to the $700 billion banker bailout, George W. Bush will add "worst piece of domestic legislation of your lifetime" next to "worst foreign policy blunder of your lifetime" on his presidential CV. The villainy is too great to focus on one villain. One could write a book, perhaps titled, "Profiles in Cowardice," on the 58 representatives who switched their votes. What does it profit a congressman to saveth the taxpayer but loseth his pork? And it doesn't get any better after Bush leaves office. Barack Obama lobbied the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for the reverse bank robbery. John McCain, too, did his part for socialism by putting the full-nelson on House conservatives, who, as it turn out, aren't particularly conservative. Couldn't they have demanded the abolition of Freddie and Fannie, or at least of the Community Redevelopment Act, as a precondition to go along to get along?
This is outrageous on so many levels too numerous to list. Our elected representatives acted like the cowardly thieves that they are and in a sane society would be criminally charged for this kind of action.
This will go down as the biggest bail out of the wealthy by a hurting middle class in this country ever and seems steps away from our government moving ever closer to socialism.
One provision in the bill that floored me was that it will allow regulators to make somewhat arbitrary judgements as to the fairness of loan principle and to adjust a previously agreed upon loan amount.
It's just unbelievable.
I didn't see that ASDF, and it is truly outrageous. Biden expressed support for tinkering with the principle of loans last night, which struck me as absolutely evil and insane. What of the sanctity of contracts? How does this help beleaguered banks? What else but an insult is this to people who bought at the height of the boom and still make their payments? If we crossed the Rubicon years ago, this is burning the bridge behind us.
we been had.
Here is a small rundown of some of the bad parts of this bill as catalogued by one person who actually read it:
My personal favorite here is that the government will be "able" to buy up worthless mort-gages at greater than the market value . . . which in fact THEY HAVE TOO if they are going to effectively "liquify" bad bank debt and provide credit stability/expansion. Of course that is what this is all about, a wealth transfer from the middle class to bankers, but seeing it made very clear is still amusingly depressing.
Note as well the fact that the government becomes a co-signer to bad debtors and so will keep the housing market artificially inflated so that both parties can continue to pursue their insane housing policies.
Corporatism, fascism, socialism, I don't care what it is called but we are well past the point of no return.
I'd really love to be more optimistic, but due to current events, I can't be. I see much chaos ahead for this country. Our leaders have lost their way and the people are largely uninformed and indifferent.
This bill is pure and obvious socialism with some fascism mixed in and I’m not confident we will either recover or see the last of oppressively bad legislation of this type.
Now I’m wondering if there is even that much difference between either of the two candidates that are being forced on us this coming election.
And isn’t GW leading us out with a bang. Eh!?
The Maverick and the Radical.
If signed legal contracts are in some instances no longer valid, then some people are obviously more equal than others.
who decides who needs to pay up, or who gets to skate? EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW? It's a joke!
democrats= spending they tell you about
republicans= spending they tell you they will never do, and turn around and scare the public into it.
