Posted on 09/23/2008 4:53:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A battle over the US government's financial rescue package heated up in Congress Tuesday, with top finance officials urging its swift passage and lawmakers digging in their heels.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in their first testimony to Congress after the 700-billion-dollar bailout was proposed just days ago, argued that lawmakers should pass the emergency measure quickly or put the entire US economy at risk.
Bernanke told lawmakers that despite unprecedented steps already taken by the Republican administration to confront the crisis, global financial markets "remain under extraordinary stress."
--snip--
Paulson, echoing Bernanke's comments, warned that if Congress did not act quickly, a credit crisis could threaten "all parts of our economy."
The warnings came as President George W. Bush vowed before world leaders at the United Nations headquarters that US lawmakers would approve the country's largest financial bailout since the 1930s Great Depression.
But the proposal to give the Treasury unprecedented authority to borrow 700 billion dollars to buy toxic mortgage-related assets from struggling financial institutions has met with stiff opposition from some lawmakers.
"What they have sent to us -- this is not acceptable," Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking panel, told reporters after Bernanke and Paulson testified.
"A lot of reservations have been expressed this morning by Democrats and Republicans on this matter," said Dodd, a Democrat. "This is not going to work."
"They're going to have to come back and work with us," he said.
The ranking Republican on the banking committee, Senator Richard Shelby, seemed to agree with Dodd.
"I have a lot of concern with the proposal," said Shelby. "Seven hundred billion dollars is a lot of money to me; it's a lot of money for taxpayers."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
McCain needs to come out and vote against it, declaring it the 0bama-Bush Bailout.
Both Obama and McCain are pretty wobbly on the whole deal.
They should not be put in charge. They should be imprisoned.
Q. Why has America ran out of money to fund its own needs?
A. America has been sending around a $1,000,000,000,000 annually to the world in trade deficits and nation building.
Part of the reason for balking, is they want to lard it up. That said, no ones explained to me why it’s a good idea for the taxpayers. It’s good for wall street alright, but not for taxpayers is what it looks like to me.
They'll approve it, though.
Political rule #1: No politician ever met a spending program he didn't like.
Make no mistake about it. The prospect of spending so much money so quickly is not only sending chills up the legs of everyone in Washington, it's giving them multiple orgasms. Never mind all this pious talk about oversight and taxpayers, they're all jazzed beyond believe by this.
Dimwit McCain could have made hay big time by coming out against this. Everyone outside of Washington and Wall Street hates this plan and all we have from McCain is a lot of disjointed nonsense. This opportunity will never come again.
McCain was on fire about this yesterday in his speech and he said no to Paulson being in charge without oversight — in fact he was livid when speaking.
Also Shelby R-AL came out against it on the radio today. He is on the Committee and they haven’t convinced him it is a good deal.
The Depression, I may say, which started in 1929 was rather mild from 1929 to 1930. And, indeed, in my opinion would have been over in 1931 at the latest had it not been that the Federal Reserve followed a policy which led to bank failures, widespread bank failures, and led to a reduction in the quantity of money.
What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and the deposits they have in the bank, for every $100 of money that there was in 1929, by 1933 there was only $67. The Federal Reserve allowed the quantity of money to decline by a third. While, at all times, it had the possibilities and the power of preventing that from happening.
I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression.
- Milton Friedman (Excerpts of Interview with PBS)
My main concern even beyond giving a blank check to Paulson and Bush is that they’re only in office for another 4 months. This bailout plan has a 2 year lifespan. That mean the next president — whom is currently unknown — will appoint the next treasury secretary — even more of an unknown.
What if 0bama wins and he appoints George $oros?
Then we would really be screwed by this proposed bailout.
Damn it!
What ever happened to saving the whales, saving the owls, for crying out loud saving the planet???? /s
Yeah, we have a true crisis now and the crisis resides in Washington thanks to lackadaisical voters who find comfort in life on the backs of producers who vote the same people into representation time and time again.
Now we are left with lackadaisical politicians who are lawmakers.
I bet owl, whale and planet saving will be put on the shelf for a bit soon since it isn't necessary now that true financial grit is required around the corner for all.
I bet that even Pelosi and Reid will "allow" using our own resources to keep our head above water.
And I'm with them, compassionate conservatism is nothing but nomenclature for “closet liberal”.
Fannie, Freddy, Lehman, et al, can all go to hell AFAIC, they're all a bunch of frauds with golden parachutes.
No bailout!
Today it should be easier to expand the money supply, we'll get bad inflation if we do, of course, so we pay for it indirectly (and I don't know enough about it to know if that would be sufficient...I think the bad debt they have is highly leveraged derivates which could mean that as long as it exists the printing presses might have to run at "full" to compensate and if so we'll all be rolling wheelbarrows full of cash to the bakery to get a loaf of bread). On the other hand, if the government does this bailout, we pay for it directly. Which is a better alternative? Good question.
You bet. Job number one is to make sure there are plenty of ways built in to get their cut. When they bailed out freddie and fannie, they specifically refused to allow provisions to prevent freddie and fannie from making political contributions. It's unbelievable. These pigs give taxpayer funds to these quasi gov't organizations and then get a kick back from them.
It was created and given to them and in some cases forced upon them by Washington politico.
NO THANKS. Congress should pass this rescue bill this week.
No bailout, no way, no how.
Stop the Obama-Bush bailout plan.
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