Free Republic

Low interest rates, easy money and malleable accounting rules are what plunged Wall Street into crisis. Yet it is low interest rates, easy money and malleable accounting rules that top the list of federal fixes. The unifying theme of the new bailout bill, all 451 pages of it, is the hair of the dog that bit you. The unblinkable fact is that Americans own too much house. We overpaid and overborrowed, and many of us are "upside down," as the car dealers say. What to do? Recognize the losses and write them off. What not to do? Inflate the currency...

Many people in Washington fear that the country is starting to spiral into a terrible downturn. And to their horror, they see the public, and many members of Congress, turning into modern-day Meyer Mishkins, more interested in punishing Wall Street than saving the economy. All of which may be true. But there is good reason for the public’s skepticism. The experts and policy makers who so desperately want to take action have failed to tell a compelling story about why they’re so afraid. It’s not enough to say that markets could freeze up, loans could become impossible to get and...

Lawmakers' failure to pass the Treasury's bailout plan Monday could further weaken an economy already hurt by a crisis of credit and confidence ... Even economists who expressed skepticism about the bailout legislation said action was preferable to no plan at all -- and essential to shore up confidence. University of Chicago Graduate School of Business economist Anil Kashyap was among those with reservations about the Treasury plan, which he felt didn't adequately attack the problem of low capital levels at financial institutions. Mr. Kashyap also felt that given the fragility of financial markets, the consequences of not acting would...

The $700 billion bailout bill is palatable to no one. It’s a huge price tag. It was originally presented to Congress as all but a fait accompli. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been underwhelming in selling the plan on Capitol Hill. And it’s hated by a public suspicious of the country’s elites, whether in Washington or on Wall Street. Put that all together with a reflex against such a massive governmental intervention among House Republicans, and it’s understandable that so many of them voted against it and the bill went down yesterday....

Nancy Pelosi blamed for Wall Street bailout defeat Philippe Naughton It was perhaps the costliest ad lib in political history, 90 seconds of ill-judged, ill-timed bile that helped to kill off any hope of consensus on Capitol Hill. That was the charge against Nancy Pelosi after Congress’s rejection of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan yesterday, a rejection that Republicans blamed directly on her aggressive and overtly partisan speech shortly before the vote. As Speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency after Dick Cheney, the most powerful woman in US political history has never been...

Let us in. I want a piece of the Troubled Asset Recovery Program. Let taxpayers individually benefit from this program by option. When you include the warrants and the mortgage refinancing, the program will be a winner. It certainly won't be a bailout.

Q: Where do you stand on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion emergency banking plan? A: Congress should pass the Paulson plan. 24 votes Congress should pass a modified version of the Paulson plan. 74 votes Congress should not pass the Paulson plan. 102 votes 200 votes total.

If the mortgage crisis and housing bubble have taught us one thing, it should be to watch out for the unintended consequences of greed. Unfortunately, our nation's legislators and political appointees haven't learned that lesson. Recent plans for housing and mortgage bailouts generally run from dumb to dumber. Today, The Wall Street Journal reported on yet another scheme, reportedly being spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It's an idea so naively populist and antimarket that you would think it came from Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if not for its cringe-inducing, Beltway-wonk moniker: the Hope Now Alliance.