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It is not $700 billion, it is $350 billion. Congress must approve the other $350 billion, which they may not.
Fred is correct: this is not an overnight "cure." It may not work at all. But my gosh, we need to do something and this is what was politically possible. We don't live in a perfect world.
What evidence do you have that Price's constituents don't support him on this? Lots of folks who said no to this at first changed their minds.
From the responses on this thread or your earlier one, more folks supported this than opposed it, or those who opposed it are not posting here, one of the two.
Your posts on this as well as your anti-Price screeds on Iraq are full of "he doesn't represent us!" catcalls. You really appear to mean "Price is not listening to Sammy Slade!"
Well, Sammy, 2010 is coming soon. Throw your hat in the ring or find a primary opponent for Price. Perhaps he or she will do better than Price's two opponents in 2006, one running from the left and one from the right who together got 10%.
Whether Sammy Slade likes it not, the 4th District Democrats overwhelmingly support Price, not on everything, but overall. If you don't like it, go work for B.J. Lawson. As you continue to observe, he's in the "Sammy camp" on this one.
If you ever meet Sammy, as I have, I don't think you will be able to imagine that he would support or work for a Republican.
While I am hesitant to jump into what is looking more and more personal and while I was agnostic about the bail out itself, Sammy Slade is not the only person who has stated that they no longer feel represented by anyone in our government. Far less "ideological" and involved people have said the same thing in the last few weeks.
It's the culmination of years and years of "compromises" that seem to only be compromises on the part of the 49% of people who vote Democratic. More and more of us believe we would not compromise to the degree that our representatives have and that those representatives have compromised on one too many things that directly impacted the middle class.
I don't think "if you don't like it, then go vote (Republican)" is a solution. This bail out was really the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of Americans and David Price and every other Democratic rep needs to hear that.
...to believe as you wish. I am taking issue with Sammy's continued use of the $700 billion figure when that was cut in half. Yes, there is another $110 billion in tax breaks (over ten years), but these tax breaks, whether they should have been included or not, don't have anything to do with the economic rescue plan.
The only reason I mentioned voting GOP is that Sammy (who is a member of our county Democratic executive committee) keeps telling us how Lawson is correct about this. Fine. If this is that important to him, he should vote for Lawson. That's democracy. Democrats don't always have to vote for Democrats.
But don't keep saying "Price is not doing what the majority of his constituents want him to do" when there is no evidence I have seen which shows that. If it is true, we will have Rep. Lawson going to Congress in January. May the best man win.
"But don't keep saying "Price is not doing what the majority of his constituents want him to do" when there is no evidence I have seen which shows that. If it is true, we will have Rep. Lawson going to Congress in January. May the best man win."
The evidence is not in who wins or who doesn't win. If my option is someone who is kind of sort of almost close to what I think and someone who is less so, I'm going to choose the latter. That doesn't mean I feel represented. It just means I vote.
I don't know what kind of calls came into Price's office last week, but I do know - from talking to someone answering the phones - what kind of calls came into neighboring offices. I doubt Price emerged unsoaked from that barrage.
Many top elected officials in Orange County are so well-entrenched in their seats of power that not only do we not have a choice in November, when the only other name on the ballot is a Republican, we really don't have a much a choice in the primary either.
I think Price is a nice guy, but don't feel he represents me well in Congress. However, there isn't a qualified Democratic politician in the district who would waste their time running against such a powerful incumbent, and that does make it harder for us to bring criticism to him. I think Rep. Price knows as well as we do that he doesn't really have to listen to us.
We need multiple parties and real alternatives. The more the plutocrats with D's and R's after their names work together to bail out the rich and powerful at the expense of the electorate, the more obvious this becomes.
Credit markets run on confidence that money lent will be paid back. When all that bad paper out there finally was exposed and bankruptcies of large financial institutions became inevitable, the credit markets froze (and still are frozen). Relief will not be immediate.
With job losses mounting, large amounts of consumer debt, consumer spending is dropping and will drop. A recession is inevitable. Stock prices are projections of profitability which will drop because consumer spending will drop. The stock market direction is often 6 months ahead of the drop or rise in the economy. However I think the bad times are coming sooner.
Without the bailout the depth of the recession or depression would likely be deeper and longer. This was only a start.
The old curmudgeon.
Sammy, you place a lot blame. Can you give us a realistic solution so we can all agree about how misrepresented we are? This is a great big huge mess. No one knows how to fix it. Heck, the Euro banks sat and scoffed at US market stupidity, did nothing to shore up their own risk, and now are getting whacked.
This whole situation stinks and is mainly the result of lender and Wall Street greed, unfettered by significant regulation. This bailout is sickening. But the risk of not trying it - in the face of no other alternative - was too much in my view. It's like the pilot telling you the plane is going to crash if you don't make an emergency landing. You may think the pilot (Paulson/Bernanke) is wrong, incompentent, stupid etc, but if the passangers took a vote, most of them would probably side with the pilot, don't you think?
No doubt this whole package is way too unbalanced in helping Wall Street w/o helping homeowners (eg - see Center for Responsible Lending proposal on bankruptcy reform that was not included in the package - the death knell being Obama saying it shouldn't be a part of it...). But what was the alternative? The Boehner plan? The McCain plan?
It's very easy to criticize, it's much harder to actually craft possible solutions. Frankly, I could understand voting for or against this package b/c I don't think anyone knows what will help at this point...
I don't claim to be an economist but I play one on TV, but seriously I thought that the reason the banks have done nothing with the toxic assets was that if they priced them at their current value then they would have a huge problem with their balance sheets forcing some of the largest to be insolvent and probably causing another depression. Yet the toxic assets is making banks hesitant to loan which really drags down the economy. This is what happened to Japan in the 90's , savings bank problem in 80's, and USA in the 30's. Solution in 30's and 80's was to temporarily nationalize the banks and clear up balance sheets and reprivatize. Not sure how Japan got out of problem but their zombie banks lasted for 10 years until they finally cleared up the balance sheet problem and got their economy going again. The balance sheet probem seem to keep bank from lending yet they are hesitant to value toxic assets at their true worth. What a catch 22. Rolling Stone has a couple of articles by Krugman in the last 6 months that really explains the problem at a laymen's level. He seems to think that Obama is on right track but needs to do more perhaps another 800billion stimulus, and he also talked about temporarily nationalizing the banks.What are some solutions to clearing up these toxic assets?? Thx
Investors have come to the realization that the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan and steps taken by other governments won’t work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets.
That sent stocks spiraling downward in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and drove investors to sink money into the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Fears about a global recession also caused oil to drop below $90 a barrel.
Wasting 700 Billion? I'm not sure that I would want to see what might have happened if we didn't do the rescue plan.
Do you have a solution for unfreezing the credit markets in short order?
PS: Having Congress at home right now is a good thing!