The government moved early Friday morning to shore up Bank of America with an additional $20 billion from the bailout fund. The government is still spending the first half of the bailout money. The Senate released the other half of the $750 bailout package Thursday. David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal talks with Renee Montagne about how well the plan is working.
No
Niet
Not just NO, but Hell, No.
It is actually making things worse.
I don’t know the background and experience of the people who commented above, but if you all know without doubt that the bailout is a failure, why don’t the people who are supposed to be experts know it? Is it just wishful thinking,or is economics so nebulous that no one really knows what will fix things?
No bailout can “fix” an economy. This bailout originally sought to prevent a collapse of the financial system—and we have avoided a collapse.
Because the answer was, is, and always will be living within our means. Individually, corporately and governmentally we have not done that. We have reaped what we have sown. Now we are proposing to fix it by borrowing even more money from our future.
A good example is all the scorn rightly being heaped on Bernie Madoff for his Ponzi scheme. But at the same time, our government has been involved in a much larger Ponzi scheme for 70 years – Social Security.
While everyone is clamoring for Bernie Madoff to go to jail – me included – no one is clamoring to throw generations of Congressional representatives into jail for doing precisely the same thing with our money, withheld from our paychecks and our employer’s paychecks, to the tune of more than $2 trillion dollars.
We have clowns to the left, jokers to the right and I’m stuck here in the middle with you.
If it weren’t so darned tragic, it would actually be funny.
From what I have been reading, the “bailout” money so far has just been a transfer of cash from the U.S. taxpayer to the private banks.
It was never supposed to be that.
The banks are not loosening credit. They don’t have to. They have no intention to do so. They are holding on to the money or buying other banks with it.
More “bailout” money will just bring more of the same greed. Personally, I think the congress should pass a windfall profit tax on the banks to recoup the “bailout” money that has already been wasted. With the proceeds of the tax, they can then set up a temporary government entity to buy the “toxic” bundled securities.
Let the banks sink or swim without taxpayer money. Or, if money must go to banks, give it to the small and local banks and credit unions that did not engage in all the stupid and fraudulent practices that caused this crisis. Reward those that performed well and leave those that performed poorly to suffer the consequences of their folly.