The bill for decades of American greed has just come due, and deadbeats at every level of society are trying to avoid paying their share.
From street-level avaricious buyers of bigger homes than they could afford with zero down and mortgage brokers and banks willing to bilk them to the covetous upper-echelon insurance companies, Wall Street houses and hedge funds that packaged all-but-worthless indebtedness at a markup for free-lunch investors, all eyes are now on Congress to pick up the tab with taxpayer money--to buy all that trash for cash without any safeguards.
Moreover, it has to be done in a super-hurry with no questions asked or the freeloaders in the markets will go into a swoon, as they did today.
Before Congress gives the Bush Administration an economic blank check comparable to the 2002 carte blanche to shoot up the Middle East, saner Senators are asking for more supervision of the Treasury handouts, more equity from the Wall Street casinos that lost their bets and more emphasis on helping responsible home owners who got caught in the squeeze.
Henry Paulson may tell them the sky is falling, but that doesn't mean that our lawmakers have to respond like Henny Pennies in a panic.
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3 comments:
For anonymous BrianNM..
Nationalization of private business has taken place during this Republican administration. Nationalization of business without compensation to the owners is expropriation.
Nationalization of private business is a mark of a socialist state.
AIG was a private business which was expropriated by the US government.
The United States is now the biggest insurance agency in the world.
This crisis is a result of the policies of the Bush administration over the last 8 years.
What part of this do you not understand?
You know another thing the Dems should demand as part of any bailout?
Paulson has to look straight into a TV camera and declare that Wall Street deregulation has been an unmitigated disaster.
It would be kinda like those game-show contestants declaring "I am not smarter than a fifth-grader". Only more fun and politically potent.
I was suspicious of the house Republicans call for insurance to be paid by Wall St. when I heard Wall St. suggested it. As a former insurance agent and CFP, now I get it. Merrill sold $6 billion for 22 cents on the dollar just before they had to sell out to Bank of America. If you were holding $6 trillion of MBS, would you rather I buy it for 22 cents on the dollar, or make you whole ($ 6 trillion) for 10 cents on the dollar. Obviously, your hair ct drops from 78 cents to 10 cents with Federal insurance. And we are all happy, right?
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