say "NO!" to bail-out mania

I don't get why they are pointing fingers as if not passing this ridiculous bill were a bad thing. Those who voted against it should be shouting their victory as representatives of the massive voice of the people who have been calling and writing to demand this nonsense be defeated.

It's nothing but panic. That's the way gamblers work all too often. But look, the corrections are happening. Investors are investing in what they perceive to be the safer courses. Trade goes up and down as it is meant to. I think these people who talk about capitalism often don't know what that word means.

This is not anything but manufactured panic and consequent reactions. Stocks and other securities are still being traded. For all the money lost, money is being made. Companies with assets are buying companies with debits at a bargain. Housing prices are way down. Oil prices are dropping. If you can remain calm while all about you are running around like headless chickens come home to roost, this is not a crisis but an opportunity. For all of us on the low end of the economic scale, it has been bad and will no doubt get worse before it gets better. Now is the time to get out of the mainstream mindset of panic and find creative ways to make our lives work better individually, in our homes and in our communities.

It's not about who is to blame but about not making a bad situation much worse. People complain about how little money we have to stretch. Where do we think the $700 billion or more would come from? Does Congress have that money lying around? It would seriously devalue the dollar to give that much imaginary credit to the investment bankers. It is exactly the people who are barely making it who would fall off the edge. Then the government has a perfect excuse to get rid of social programs because there is no money for them.

I am all for anyone who will put reigns on this incredibly stupid and anti-democratic bail-out plan. It grieves me that the Democrats appear to be so much for it, but then look at how they have ignored the pleas of the people who voted them in for the change we're not getting.

It appears that most Americans want nothing to do with this "bailout." Amazingly we have the Socialists agreeing with the Conservatives that this is a very bad idea indeed. Yet, Congress seems determined to go ahead with some minor adjustments. When did Congress decide the will of the people no longer matters?

This whole economic "crisis" appears to me to be part of a last grab attempt for the outgoing Bush administration to rip off whatever they can from this country before they're gone. It continues to amaze me that the leaders of the so-called party of fiscal conservatism and individual freedom so incredibly stomps on their stated core values.

My understanding of the US financial market is that we have the Fed, which is not a governmental agency but rather a consortium of bankers, which lends money to financial institutions for them to in turn lend to businesses and others seeking financing. Then, there is the stock market in which businesses offer shares to investors in return for operating capital. I have heard on the tv network I am now defaulting to, Bloomberg, that people are investing vast sums in 0% interest Treasury Notes because they are looking for a safe place to put their money. So, what's the "crisis"? It sounds like a political soundbite to increase fear and lower rationality to me.

The only real cure for the scourge of the "too big to fail" monsters is small, local trade based on our own economic realities.

In this time when the failure of the over-the-top wealth destroyers gets all the attention and all the bailing, we people who actually do the work and keep the country going will have to help each other with our own bailing.

We the tax payers are responsible to fund every crazy scheme the governmental/financial complex can dream up. Then we get vilified as stupid, lazy, irresponsible when we can't scrape up enough to pay the outrageous prices for our more and more minimalist lifestyles.

It really burns me when I hear about needing to give all these breaks to the upper crust so they will give us poor slobs jobs. As if they give anything not absolutely required (and then find ways to get out of those). Working people are the true heroes, the true creators of wealth. Yet, we get no respect.

Turned from distracting smoke and mirrors, the real problem belongs not to "Wall Street" and those whose game of choice is trading in what they like to call a "free market" but to the neighborhoods of "Main Street" losing credit and credibility to empty, unmaintained properties foreclosed upon in a frenzy of insanity.

These properties are "real" estate. They have value. Not so high as the bubble tried to make us believe, but real value, especially to those who thought of them as "home." A real cure for what ails US economy would encourage the profit motive and sanity, enlist investors (looking desperately for somewhere to put the money they have taken out of karmically challenged investment banks) to buy these properties and work out mortgage or rental arrangements with those who want to live in and maintain them, by-pass the whole evil episode and get back to market trade based on real values that can be easily understood by Main Street and learned through experience by Wall Street.

Congress ought to demand unbundled mortgages be sold at bargain basement prices to local financial institutions and groups then required to work out equitable arrangements with homeowners/residents to keep them in those homes. This is how it should have been, mortgages held by community lenders who have a stake in keeping the community healthy and the authority to work out compromise arrangements with their customers.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=186045

http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/?petition=Financial_Crisis_1

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/08/bushonomics.html


http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

http://www.counterpunch.org/martens09202008.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9973c5b0-8a6d-11dd-a76a-0000779fd18c.html

http://socialistaotearoa.blogspot.com/2008/09/financial-meltdown-why-capitalism-is-in.html

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=235

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept08/destruction9-08.html

What Crisis? a.k.a. Creative Destruction Is The Beating Heart of Capitalism

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279 Money as Debt