CASH FOR EQUITY NOT PAPER

The US Congress is currently under pressure to quickly pass Paulson’s $700 billion bail-out proposal. Paulson's initial proposal will give the Bush administration incredible power to privatize profits while socializing the losses!

If any company is given federal assistance, the US government should receive equity in the company otherwise any massive cash infusion will merely reward those banks that got deepest in debt. Buying their worthless paper makes no sense. There is no clear method to evaluate the paper to be 'bought' and worst of all, no regulations to address the real cause or to investigate possible criminal activity. Buying this worthless paper without enforcing new regulations will merely encourage continued derivatives trading and increase the total debt. If this occurs, does anyone believe that $700 billion will be enough? I expect total bail-out costs could run into the tens of trillions if foreign banks are included.

On the other hand, government ownership will ensure that future profits (if any) are returned to the people and that new regulations to manage derivatives trading - assuming Congress writes them - are followed. If and when these banks become profitable and socially responsible, they can be sold back to private investors.

I do not trust Treasury Secretary Paulson and the Bush administration to administer this huge 'bail-out/buy-out'. As with the war in Iraq, I fear that most of this money will go to political allies and cronies.

A separate bi-partisan committee/agency should be created to assess other alternatives. If it is agreed to buy these failing banks at their current market value, the guidelines and restrictions must be transparent to all. All purchase offers should be subject to review and approval by Congress.

I believe it is highly likely that conspiracy to defraud and outright fraud has occurred before and may occur during this 'rescue' plan. An independent agency should be assigned to investigate fraud/conspiracy and these investigations should begin immediately.

The current approach uses "fear of imminent financial collapse and appeals to the need for public sacrifice" combined with a rush to push a "clean" bill through a Congress distracted by “how to protect the interests of homeowners facing foreclosure”, without allowing adequate time for assessment. This reminds me of the method that President Bush used to pass the bill to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

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Economics 101: There is no Free Lunch.

I don't want your sob story, because the next ten years will make today look like Christmas whether or not we give away the farm.

The loss of billions on Wall Street is the cost of doing business in the post-regulation world. They wanted to work without the government over their shoulder, and they got it. If they didn't care enough about solvency to check their own facts, that's not my problem. I don't have millions of dollars, I don't have property to sell when inflation makes the dollars I have worthless, and I won't be getting a golden parachute.

When a man jumps off a bridge, we don't tie all our shoelaces together and throw them down after him.

There's no way that the 700B which won't even exist until the Federal Reserve Bank prints it will do anything but ruin the financial stability of our domestic market. If we permit the criminal classes of Wall Street and Washington to bail themselves out, massive inflation will accompany the inevitable massive unemployment, and force millions into poverty and starvation.

Say NO to the bailout, no matter what dress it wears!

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Here's a musical antidote to having your head explode in anticipation of the impending Gulf of Wall Street bailout resolution:

"WE"RE GONNA HAVE A SCARY HALLOWEEN!"
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=5896354

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and the Bush Cabal is going to make the most of it before the lucrative door of EASY money closes.

Welcome to the "October Surprise!" Just a tad early.

Let them fall on their own swords, they sharpened them up for an unsuspecting citizenry - let them swallow their own poison.

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Time to call your Senators and Representative and tell them no to Paulson's Raw Deal ...

Zip Code link to Your Senators and Representative

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What FDR Did ...

Nationalize, Evaluate , Liquidate , Recapitalize ... Fire the Banksters ...

~ Nationalize all the banks and declare a bank holiday just like FDR did.

~ Evaluate the banks assets ...

~ Liquidate failed banks ...

~ Re-capitalize healthy banks and take a stake for any investment ...

~ Fire the Banksters and the boards ...

This is the only way to cleanse the system. Without getting rid of the toxic waste the few will always pollute the many causing credit seizure.

Would this cost 700 billlion dollars ? No where near that. Then why are we doing this ... to bail out insolvent banks that should go belly up and one in particular ... Goldman Sachs ... Paulson's old firm where Paulson has many friends and much money !

Bank of America Says "Paulson Plan Benefits Mostly Goldman, Morgan" A study done by a BoA securities analyst shows that Goldman Sacjs has the most to gain by this bailout.

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we are getting what we didn't pay for. every time you try to get something for less than what it is really worth you end up paying for it somewhere else. people in the u.s. live beyond their means and think it's okay to do so. people in the u.s. live pay check to pay check always counting on future riches to pay for what they have consumed in the present. the future is here and it wants to be paid now. this is taxation with representation. all of these "crooks on wall st" did everything they could to keep the "american dream" going, while lining their own pockets of course, but that's the american dream. work hard, succeed. live like a king either way. now we all have to pay up.

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Talk about "socialism for the rich!!" As is often the case in late capitalism, the gains are privatized and the losses socialized. The only way this should go through is if there are guarantees of congressional oversight, most of the money goes to help the 3 million homeowners in danger of foreclosure stay in their homes, there is emergency legislation passed to reregulate the financial system including restoring glass-steagal and regulating the MBS market and finally, the implementation of the plan must be fully transparent.

The US financial system is becoming dangerously chaotic and unstable. Congress needs to act.

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Havent seen people so upset since Bush pushed through the selling of US ports to Dubai. This is looking like it is headed for the same backlash; Funny how touchy we get about our ports and money and such.

Yes, this regime was "front page" with their corruption while others before them covered up somewhat better. We have learned now there really isnt any reason to cover this stuff up because there is absolutely nothing anybody will do to you for stealing, lying, war crimes, etc. Mr. Dodd, senate banking chair keeps his job after Wall Street money couldnt buy him the presidency he sought. Barney Frank, chairman of the financial service committee, never saw a problem he couldnt solve by a bailout. Both men democrats, both men went kicking and shouting doubting the existence of a housing bubble to begin with. Actually, Congress people would be by far much better off reading the blogs of those who saw this coming two years ago, rather than listening to Hank Paulson or Ben Bernanke. Even today Bernanke threatened us with recession if we don't go along with Hank's bailout. A recession, imagine that.

A logical conclusion is that our corrupt financial system is dead and there is little good reason to save it. It is begging to be re-built if only these politicians would let it go. A cure for this sort of thing is called reorganization under bankruptcy proceedings. The strong and well run survives. Plenty of blame to go around, but a Congress reacting to the now walking dead is late to this party. And for their tardiness, should never be returned to office, and never given the chance to vote on bankrupting the United States to save their buddies on Wall Street.

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Had my letter ready to go now for over a hour and not a single movement on the status bar. Oh I'll keep trying but I think we all are.

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$700 Billion works out to $6000 for each US Household.

That's right, there are 116 million households in the US. And we're being asked to ante up an average of $6000 for each household to bail out those who have profited from lax regulations and indolent oversight.

Half of us have incomes under $50,000 per year. $6000 seems like real money to us, unlike the rich with their seven houses and golden parachutes.

At the very least, we need to demand clear ground rules, diligent oversight, and a share in any future profits of whatever shaky institutions we're being asked to invest in.

This crisis has been building for years. We have time to carefully consider how to respond. Let's not be stampeded by rush scare tactics. Let our representatives be very deliberate as they work out what to do.

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Is there ANYBODY beyond Wall Street or the Bush administration who thinks this cluster-f*** of a bail-out plan is actually a good idea?

These greedy f***ers have been screaming bloody murder about government regulation for decades; "get the guv'ment off our backs! Gub'ment is the problem! Big guv'ment stifles capitalism etc etc etc" and now, after years of reckless, unchecked, unregulated villany, they've all suddenly morphed into socialists!
(But, their "God" forbid we have universal health care. . .that's still "evil socialized medicine like they have in--y'know, nudge nudge, wink wink--France!") Give me a BREAK (and, yes, give me French-style socialized medicine while your at it!!!!!)

Good effing gawds, people! I was telling anybody who'd listen ten years ago that these hyper-complex derivatives and sub-prime-mortgage leveraged investments were going to result in disaster; maybe even a Great Depression. And I was RIGHT, just like Casandra amidst the ruins of Troy!

What really appals me about this legislation is the Bushies' demand that it be passed so quickly wihout any kind of deliberation or oversight (can we say; Patriot Act? Iraq war? etc etc etc). Every time these rapacious robber barons ignore a problem until it blows up in their face, they start running around like Chicken Little with his head cut off, screaming that "Congress must act NOW!" And every effing time, THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG!!!!!!

Well, not this time! I've e-mailed all three of my reps in Congress to register my OUTRAGE!

And if it hasn't been crystal clear up to now,
this whole mess should drive home the point like a railroad spike lobotomy:

THE ONLY SANE CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008 IS BARACK OBAMA!!!!!!!!!

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But he has been ridiculed by the so called main street media because he recognized that itis the british orchestrated plan to reestablish british emopire on the back of american power. and he was reviled just as the prominent jewish buinessman rudoph Hearst of publishing empire was reviled for opposing wilson's tilt to fight on behalf of britian against other european powers( germany that time in 1914).

look what he has written now--

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/09/23/larouche
"LaRouche: "This Is Straight-Out Fascism"
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September 23, 2008 (LPAC)--Lyndon LaRouche today warned Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson that his bailout scheme, particularly its demand, in Section 8, for absolute dictatorial decision-making powers over all aspects of the trillion-dollar bailout, "is straight-out fascism. And the American people will never tolerate this.'' LaRouche candidly added, "The American people are being screwed, and they shall not take it kindly, I would hope.''

In the past 24 hours, a handful of people have begun to join LaRouche in calling this looting swindle for what it is. In a column in today's New York Times by David Brooks, three critics of the bailout scheme were quoted. William Greider warned, "If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.'' Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics wrote, "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist love fest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks.'' But Brooks himself added, "If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We're not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We're not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We're entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable--and often oligarchic--framework for capitalist endeavor.'' Economist Kling commented, on his own website, hours after the Brook article appeared, musing, "Progressive corporatism--I guess it goes down easier than liberal fascism.''

Indeed, more than 30 years ago, Lyndon LaRouche warned about the dangers of "fascism with a democratic face,'' and singled out the David Rockefeller interests as the chief American architects of this fascism. Today, the same Rockefeller interests are driving the outright corporatist/Fascist schemes of the likes of Felix Rohatyn, including his so-called Public Private Partnership Initiatives, which have been aggressively peddled by Rohatyn clones, Rockefeller Foundation director Judith Rudin, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"They are all fascists, of the classic fascist/corporatist tradition,'' LaRouche noted, "especially Felix 'The Fascist' Rohatyn. I don't know why more people don't have the guts to just call it for what it is: straight-out fascism. Maybe they are just afraid the American people will, sooner or later, greet them with pitch-forks.''

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http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/09/23/

quote--
"
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: Foxes Run The Chicken Coop
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September 22, 2008 (LPAC)-At 9 PM on Sunday night, the Federal Reserve Board approved the applications of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies. With that action, the last of the major Wall Street investment banks will disappear, some 14 months after Lyndon LaRouche declared the financial system dead. As we saw with Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch, the remaining investment banking operations are being reorganized into the commercial banking apparatus, where their demise will allegedly be more manageable. While many explanations have been advanced as reasons for the two Wall Street giants to make this move, the simple fact is that, with the demise of the securities markets, they were no longer viable, and this is the only hope they have of survival. As bank holding companies regulated by the Fed, they will of course have access to the growing list of bailout facilities.

What is now planned is a rapid consolidation of the banking sector into a handful of giant banks with both depository and speculative functions, combining commercial and investment banking in ways which hark back to the era before the Great Depression, when banks knowingly dumped bad paper on their customers as a way of protecting themselves in the crash. FDR used the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to drive a wedge between commercial banking and investment banking as a way of stopping such abuse. Congress, at the behest of the banks, began undercutting Glass-Steagall in the 1980s, and it was officially repealed in 1999, making it easier for the banks to return to their rapacious, pre-FDR ways.

LaRouche said on September 15 after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, "The banks and financial institutions are all sick, but you have to start minimizing what you try to bail out at this point...This is a question of triage. Now the triage begins."

Treasury Secretary Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Plunge Protection Team are attempting their own form of triage, trying to save as much of the speculative paper as possible. Everyone should know that Paulson is a former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. The fox is indeed in charge of the chicken coop.

As the waves of bank failures begin, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will now be in a position to begin gobbling banks up after the FDIC has eaten the losses, and thus become major banks themselves. They, and the other giants like J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America, can then use your bank deposits as their own speculative piggy banks.

This crisis has just begun, and will grow far worse over the coming hours and days. As it does, the relevant and responsible people ought to be reminded--even if it requires a two-by-four to jog their memories--that this crisis would not have been possible without the systematic reversal of President Franklin Roosevelt's banking regulations, which, among other virtues, kept the risky activities of the investment banks separate from the necessary activities of commercial banks. FDR's regulations represented the high-water mark of modern national financial regulation, which is precisely why the bankers demanded that his regulations be repealed, in favor of the old imperial model.

As LaRouche repeated on the LaRouche Show on September 20, "What has to be done is a number of measures which I've prescribed; but, otherwise, we have to take action based on the principle of law we used to have: Glass-Steagall. What we have to do now, is immediately go in and take all the banks that are real banks, chartered banks, state banks, and Federal banks, on which the communities are dependent, ---"

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"In the next 24 hours, Congress could shape America's financial well-being for decades."
Get real!....What a laughable statement! When has Congress ever been able accomplished anything in 24 hours, let alone one of the most complex problems they've ever been handed. I'd say they're lucky if they accomplish this in 24 weeks, especially when they operate on their Tuesday through Thursday work-week.

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According to McCain, the worker is the only sound fundamental in this economy, so shouldn't we be the recipients of a bailout instead of the crooks who drove it?

Of course, bankruptcy reform in 2005 eliminated the bailout option for workers because credit card companies wanted guarantees that if they hooked us they wouldn't have to release us. But the principles of trickle down economy promote bankruptcy for corporations so that they are in a position to save the victims they created.

I still haven't heard anyone explain how a stage 5 life threatening financial tumor sprung forth overnight to kill unless we treat it immediately. If this had happened last year, would it have gotten in the way of our saving Iraq from terrorists?

Funny how Bush never wants to be asked for an itemized receipt. "give me 100 billion for Iraq, no questions asked. your children will die if you don't." Now "give us 700 billion or you'll all lose your jobs and houses (and the ability to pay off your 30% monthly interest of credit card debt."

Remember Hurricane Katrina. Congress urged Bush to appoint a financial czar to oversee the aid package for the gulf region. He refused. Most of those people were fleeced out of their money or saw it diverted to "contractors."

It may be too late to impeach Bush but the statute of limitations gives us time to arrest him and his lousy enabling administration.

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I just wonder what Paulsen's self-interest in this bailout is?
How long ago was he Goldman's CEO? And is he still a stockholder?
Surely not, but I don't get shocked easily anymore.
Can someone help with some info,
Doesn't Paulsen have a conflict of interest here?

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NO WAY TO EARMARK, NO VALUATIONS, NO ACCOUNTABILITY... SOUNDS TO ME LIKE DICK CHENEY FOUND A NEW WAY TO FUND THE NEXT WAR WITH IRAN OR RUSSIA AND KEEP THE WAR MACHINE PARTY ROLLING

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There’s no excuse for allowing the collapse of the U.S. economy to happen.

No amnesty, no pardons.

Pursue the Bush administration beyond January 20 until they are brought to justice.

FREE AMERICA

REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY

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I am so f***ing pissed off at the Greedy Class and I mean it; Off with Their Heads! Jail! How Paulson and Bernake can sit there and bullshit everyone in the room...and off with the heads of both houses of Congress if they cave in to a lamer-than-lame-f***ing duck 'Resident' and his Henchman. Twentyfour hours! Who ever said more like 24 weeks was talking true about this gutless bunch in Mordor. Gawd!
BTW, I did call both my California Senators and my Representative and sent them emails!
Gawd!

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for knuckling under to these fuckers every chance you got these past 2 years.

jdfu!

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When selfish politicians are done bailing out mismanaged big banks with 750 billion of taxpayers money the American public will wake up one morning and realize what has been done to them. They never will forgive those that voted yes on the biggest giveaway in American history. The problem could have been solved with an organized bankruptcy of the losers in their big game of chance. But it was more profitable to the financial portfolios of many congressmen to provide a handout to rich friends in the banking business. Lets hope that this bill is rejected by conscientious servers of the public interest

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Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia has been suffering a die-off, the population declining by about a million per year. So, as our economic Recession slips into Depression and Bush creates a state managed economy similar to Russia, we will suffer a die-off too. That is the upper class solution to overpopulation and global warming!

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Does anyone know or have a copy of the exact language of the Bailout Plan? I have been unable to find a copy of it anywhere on the Internet.

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