DU'ers may disagree on the severity of this mess and how to deal with it . . .

[Sugarcoated]

. . . but, while I admit I'm a dummy in regards to finances, if W and this administration hadn't been so dishonest and so thoroughly corrupt there would be more trust for their case. The financial experts here may be right, but blame Smirk and his merry band of 'thugs for the mistrust that makes us non-financial people suspicious - and the public masses.

[Lint Head]

1. Please mommie 'P' can we impeach the criminals now?

:dem:

[Sugarcoated]

2. Their approval rating would go through the roof

[Epiphany4z]

3. Trust is the thing

who trust these guys to not be playing us for fools again.....

[CountAllVotes]

5. no one trusts "them"

screw me once, shame on me. Screw me twice SHAME ON YOU!!!

:dem:

[HereSince1628]

4. The market is down more than usual, but not enough to halt trading

as the rules were created to deal with crises, this then isn't a one day "crisis"

The game of chicken is on. Don't even think that those with a lot of skin in the game are above playing this to try to intimidate Congress.

[Sugarcoated]

6. My feeling from watching this Repub freak show right now

people will be even more ripe for change. This will help Obama.

[Forkboy]

7. Excellent points, and I think that's a huge factor for many.

I don't know enough about it either way to say much with any certainty, but a lot of people remember the last bill that was passed in a hurry to save us all, The Patriot Act. My own suspicion is that this is the last fleecing of the American taxpayer by the Bush Admin. There's no easier way to manipulate people than through fear, and people are scared shitless right now (understandably so).

[Sugarcoated]

8. I'd like to know what my man Russ Feigold

thinks

[Forkboy]

9. I don't know, but I'd be curious to find out.

And I admit, my suspicions could be easily wrong, but I feel like we're in act 2 of a play I've seen before, and act 3 didn't end up well.

[Blue Meany]

10. My feeling is that it is much worse than they are letting on...

The government doesn't have the resources to bail out the $250 trillion in various derivatives that are supposed to be out there in the global market. What their trying to do is inject enough liquidity into the market so that private investors feel safe to bring their money back, so that credit will be available to keep the economy moving.

But, of course, this is just the financial sector. The real American economy has been in the dumps for a long time; witness the escalating trade deficit. We consume more than we produce, relying on credit to make up the difference, and we import more than we export. This, I think, is the crux of the matter. The financial sector has been serving as enabler to this process by cooking up various ponzi schemes to make it look like we have resources that we don't. This kind of economy has to crash, and the sooner it happens the easier it will be on all of us. But there is no easy way out.

If the govt. is going to do anything to get the economy going again, it will have to start taxing the rich in a big way, because they're the only ones who have enough to make a difference.

[Raineyb]

11. Thank you

I've seen so many posts that are just unnecessarily nasty because you may not be for this bailout. Yet there are things that need to be taken into account and people seem to have just jumped onto a bill because they've been told the sky is falling.

I don't claim to be a genius in matters financial but I wasn't really too keen on this bailout there seemed to be things missing in order to make the bill a decent one and anything that would make the bill a decent one wouldn't get passed with Republican support.

Where were the fixes? No one seems to want to answer this question. In the CNN article I read about the bailout I saw no mention of anything that would fix the system that got us into this mess in the first place. Was the plan going to force the banks to hold on to the mortgages they make thus insuring that the banks wouldn't lend to people knowing that the mortgage would go bad after it's been sold off? How about a tax on stock transfers to tamp down on speculation? Any mention of that? Why are we bailing out the banks instead of buying a stake in it? If we owned a stake in it we could then sell off the stake once the bank started being profitable again. Instead it seemed like we would be buying off the bad paper so there would be money available for lending but that would stick the taxpayers with the bad paper with the likelihood that we'd get stuck with the losses. So we're going to allow the banks to privatize the profits and socialize the losses? Is this acceptable? What's to stop the banks from repeating their behavior with the bad loans? What about reinstating the parts of Glass-Steagall that were repealed in 1999? Why aren't we considering breaking up these large financial monstrosities? It didn't look like they even tried!

I'm not hoping the whole thing will crash, I just lost my job, I have a 401K I need to be able to find a job and my car is 12 years old so this characterization of people who weren't so keen on this bailout is simply unfair. I don't think that allowing the whole system to crash is the way to go but I don't think that rushing about like a decapitated chicken because Bush said the sky is falling is the way to go either. Every time Bush has tried to push the Congress into ramming a bill to him for signature nothing good has come of it.

So thank you for reminding folks that just because some of us were not jumping up for joy and thought that we might want to take a bit more time contemplating how much and what should go into any bailout deal (or even if we need a bailout in the first place) aren't a bunch of selfish fucks who don't give a damn. We've seen what happens when bills are passed through in a rush like this it's only healthy to be skeptical of an administration that's comprised of inveterate liars from top to bottom.

Let's not forget that Wall Street is looking to us the taxpayers for a handout to clean up a mess they've created. We as individuals cannot go to the bank and demand extraordinarily favorable conditions to a loan, the person on welfare can't demand that the government be really understanding (or apparently reasonably civil for that matter) in regards to benefits, Wall Street certainly should be no different

Regards

[seabeyond]

12. yes. right on. HUGE issues they lied to us. NO ONE can trust what is being said

how dire, if to act is needed

i tended to act. but regularly i asked hubby, how do we know....

and that is on bushco.... absolutely

[Raineyb]

13. I see the bailout now folks are talking using the tanking DOW as evidence of the necessity

of this bill.

Is this not the same DOW that goes up every time unemployment goes up. I'm not really sure that the DOW industrial average is necessarily the end off to be all of financial indicators. We're depending on the same crooks who are coming to us for money to tell us if what's passed is good enough? That makes no sense.

Regards