Comments on McDermott: My phones were melting!

We now live in a society where zero percent of the population has any idea at all how the world works, and attack their legislators if they do.

I agree completely - above.

As their jobs end and plants and business close - they will not get it.

Sad.

The world is headed for the 2nd Great Depression. It won't be pretty, hunger, no money, no jobs, worldwide.

Mid all this there might be a run on the dollar and an attempt to collapse it, thus, changing the balance of economic power for the USA for 100's years. Retailing is all credit supported. Half the retail chains of America will go out of business in two months if this continues, along with auto dealers, construction and a very long list.

Amazing. And by the way, in the last week the central banks of the world have pumped hundreds of billions of short term money into the system and it has not solved the problem. We Must purge the bad real estate paper out of the system into a separate fiscal management system, We must.

When you say "retailing", Jack, you're talking about TWO THIRDS of the American economy. And it's all credit-based. Credit floats every transaction in the economy.

The real crisis, though, is coming from the total lockdown in interbank lending. This is where the world really operates: at the level of the LIBOR. Our whole lives shut down if that market is stuffed up any longer.

Hastily pulled off the biggest robbery of the American people in history. You'll see. All this money will be stolen just like the money that was stolen by mortgage lenders who got us into this. And we, the people, will be no better off. Even the Stock Exchange fell after this boondogle was passed.

No, no, no.

We're not saying that Congress shouldn't do anything; we're saying that the actions should start with Main Street and not Wall Street and this bill was fatally flawed from the beginning.

1) The financial industry must be re-regulated, especially hedge funds and CDSs have never been regulated and are likely to be the next to blow.

2) Nationalize insolvent firms, period. Punish the people responsible and hold them accountable.

3) Put millions to work through a massive investment in our failing infrastructure and public education.

4) Eliminate the age restriction on Medicare so that all Americans have basic health coverage. Many foreclosures--if not most prior to the credit bubble--are cause by massive medical bills and unexpected illnesses.

5) Require financial companies to hold realistic levels of debt. Leveraging a firm 30 to 1 or FSM help us 40 to 1 is a sure strategy for failure.

The legislation passed will address none of these fundamental issues.

See you in a few months at "Bailout II!"

Slog needs to buy itself a failing bank. That way, if the national slowdown in online ad revenue accelerates you have a nice offset from the taxpayer.

Down is the new up.

Your proposal, Andrew, would garner the support of about 20 Senators and 100 Congressmen. Meanwhile, some large American cities (maybe including our own) would start to file for bankruptcy -- something that's never happened before.

The "Main Street vs. Wall Street" divide is imaginary; Main Street IS Wall Street. It has nothing to do with "bailouts" and everything to do with opening the credit markets. Main Street absolutely depends on the credit markets, every bit as much as Wall Street does.

And we'll get most of the money back. The cost to the taxpayers is nowhere near $700 billion -- but the cost to the taxpayers of doing nothing is ten times that.

@ Fnarf,

Again, I'm not advocating doing nothing. I'm stating that there is no chance this bill will accomplish the stated goal, and a solution that starts with the consumer is the approach that will work.

And let's not even get into the obscene conflicts of interest at work here--Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldmine Sachs from 1999-2006, deciding which firms live and die for only one example.

My Super Constitutional Boyfriend, Glenn Greenwald explains far more eloquently than I:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/01/pearlstein/index.html

"First, an enormous number of Actual Economists -- as opposed to newspaper columnists -- vigorously oppose the bailout. Professor Nouriel Roubini called it a "disgrace" and has repeatedly argued it will not alleviate the crisis: "the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown."

Second, all sorts of other Actual Experts -- not just Pearlstein's idiot-readers and moron-left-wing-bloggers who have the audacity to object -- have argued that this plan won't work, is deeply unjust, and that far better and more equitable alternatives exist.

Third... "there's an enormous amount of just wrong reporting going on." In particular, Johnston documented the fear-mongering taking place among TV journalists that has plainly put the public into the state of submissive panic that Pearlstein wants them to be in, whereby -- exactly as was true for Iraq, eavesdropping, the Patriot Act and a whole host of other measures -- they come to be convinced that they better unquestioningly and immediately submit to the dictates of the political and media establishment, they better relinquish any belief that they should question what they're being told, lest they suffer imminent, inevitable, catastrophic doom."

Etc, etc, etc...

uh, no.

I didn't have any problem with a congressional solution to our financial collapse. I just didn't see why we had to rush into a hastily conceived, probably unconstitutional, doomed to fail, let's just throw a huge shitload of money solution to the problem.

And that's why I emailed all my congressional telling them to slow the fuck down before they commit to bankrupting our future in a lame attempt to save our present.

way to do your homework, jim. rather than listening to the volume of yahoos calling, you could educate yourself & do what you think is best for your constituents.

mcdermott is a flibberdigibbet & i'm done voting for him. now he'll only get 84.999999999% of the vote in the 7th. he needs to retire.

McDermott's on acid.

I may vote GOP this year for Congress, I'm THAT MAD at Jim!

oh, wait, Jim voted AGAINST it the second time.

Never mind.