An (animated) Plan to Rescue Taxpayers and Main Street

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081008/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_mortgages
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/fair_effective_graphic.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/handle_with_care.html

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsons initial proposal for the giant Wall Street bailout would have given him, as secretary of the Treasury, the personal authority to spend $700 billion of taxpayers money to buy troubled financial assets on any terms he saw fit. He would then be authorized to sell these assets, also without limitation. Under his proposal, his actions are explicitly exempted from review by any court or administrative body.

Congress appears to be moving Paulson off these extreme terms, but any final deal should rest meaningful control, true decision-making authority, not in one person and certainly not with the secretary of the Treasury of an administration that, in large part, authored this crisis. Paulson along with the rest of the Bush economic policy apparatus—and in fact all of those who are ideologically resistant to a role for government in the economy—are deeply implicated in the mess were in. Whether we call it incompetence, gross negligence or ideology run amok, no action was taken as the economy, and the financial sector in particular, grew more and more dependent on a mass of untenable loans in over-valued assets.

Since that bubble began to burst they have dragged their feet in taking the kind of comprehensive action thats been needed—resisting congressional attempts to fix the housing market and calls by the Center for American Progress, among others, to jump in to stop the bleeding before it ever reached this stage. More aggressive action has been needed for months to preserve the value of homes for the benefit of homeowners, to protect the value which underlies the mortgage-related assets in the hands of investors, and to prevent the loss of so much value in our overall economy.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• bailout
• bernanke
• billion
• bush
• congress
• credit
• crisis
• debt
• economy
• treasury
• fed
• estate
• housing
• mortgage
• paulson
• real
• street
• wall
• lehman
• merrill
• goldman
• bear
• stearns
• finance
• house
• bank
• trade
• securities
• republican
• democrat
• mccain
• obama

[LordCorinth]

this ''government on youtube'' is a steaming pile of bullsh*t that i honestly think no smart person is falling for.... what we need is to stop with all these f*cking plans and deals and just let the chips fall where they may. if people from the highest of high to the lowest of low need to go bankrupt and start over then i say hell yes. no one ever gave me anything, and i never bought what i couldn't afford. time to do the same, America.

[KhmerD0g]

those $700 billions will go to foreign investors, ceo, and bankers. how stupid do u think we are? u have to use cartoon because u think we are stupid?

china invests heavily in Freddy-Mac. they said if U.S. doesn't do anything when the companies stock sink they will dump U.S. dollar. guess what? a day later Freddy-Mac collapsed. then the U.S. came in and bail those companies out. chinese government was happy about that.

[im4wur]

"Bailout"? More like: Heads I win. Tails you lose.

[wildpeachatl737]

Property values are going to fall anyway as the real estate market adjusts to the artificially created values due to the rampant mortgage fraud that goes along with this fiasco.

Rogue appraisers were valuating homes according to the what they broker needed the house to come it, in some cases. As these houses entered the market at these inflated prices, it drove up the remainder.

Some people are going to lose value, point blank, but this plan is better than what's proposed...

[DominicanoOG]

guys listen they need our help we must give them every last cent we own from our life savings and checks that we get from working . We must save wall st.!!

[theocide421]

this video completely ignores the issue of credit default swap. incomplete analysis

[oiuoiu988]

even if we pretend that the 150 trillion dollar derivative problem doesnt dwarf all the other problems were looking at in the economy we still have to identify the problem that too many people own homes. letting people walk away from their mortgage without damaging their precious credit score would go a long way towards achieving price discovery in the housing market before the precious credit scores dont matter anymore because foreigners will be buying the houses for cash.

[oiuoiu988]

actually youre wrong, 700 billion dollars divided by 300 million people would be about 2300$ per american. the amount they gave us in those government checks in the spring was closer to 70 billion, one tenth.

[12235117657598502586]

frithwks, please don't speculate on the Real cost of the bailout...part of the reason this mess exists is due to unregulated speculation!

Who pays for the interest? Taxpayer of course!

Property values will fall further, but hey, that won't bother the rich cos they don't have loans on any of their properties.Only the middle class & poor have home loans!

Still, best not to worry too much eh, after all, what can you or any of your fellow tax paying citizens do about your government?

[NavdeepSinghYoga]

The $700 bn "bankers bailout" (or rescue plan as it has now being renamed) won't work, because it will be used to purchase bad repackaged securities globally, and not necessarily in the US, so it will have a questionable effect on main street. Paulson vetoed a clause to force the $700 bn to be used solely to purchase US securities and mortgages