Bailout Bill FAILS to pass
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Bailout Bill FAILS to pass
| Mon, 09-29-2008 - 2:32pm |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26884523/
That's rtight folks..the markets have dropped like a hot potato..and the bill won't pass. I am sure for those of you who dislike MSNBC..that any major news course has the same details.













Yep. It's all over the news.
Reaganomics didn't seem to work out all that well for this country, did it?
~Ashley~
~Ashley~
Actually, with the bill's failure, you could argue its the triumph.
Sure, but the CEOs have already gotten out with their million dollar "golden parachutes" so to speak. If the market crashes, with it goes the average American's savings and investments too, not to mention jobs. The good stuff didn't trickle down, it's lining the pockets of the greedy people at the top, but you'd better believe that the crap will not only trickle down. It will pour. Jobs will be lost, entire retirement investment portfolios will be worth a fraction of what they were, and so on. The people at the top who have been making money hand over fist probably have enough of a cushion to ride this out. The average Americans, (too) many of which live paycheck to paycheck, probably do not. That's the essential problem, IMO. The money stayed concentrated at the top instead of trickling down because of greed but there's no incentive to keep the crap from trickling (pouring) down - it will hit the middle class like a ton of bricks.
I'm not saying the bailout was even the right answer. To be honest, as a person who has always made smart financial decisions and lived well within my means, I am really mad that the government would have to bail out these corrupt businesses. I'm even irritated that they would bail out people who took out crazy mortgages. But the truth is that the failing of the market won't benefit anyone. I'm not sure how to fix it - I'm no economist, but what I do believe is that the trickle down philosophy is at best seriously flawed and at worst completely wrong.
I'm not saying that if people at the top have more money they won't hire more people and pay their employees more. I'm sure some of them do. But I think that it has been shown that many of them don't give a flip about those things. They are too busy lining their own pockets and lying to investors.
~Ashley~
~Ashley~
Ashley, the only way the executives have "gotten out with their golden parachutes" is if they left before things went south.
This is probably long for a lot of you, but I urge each of you to listen to this episode of This American Life called The Giant Pool of Money.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242
It explains how we got here, specifically with the financial and housing sectors.
How can ANYONE say this is in any way evidence of how Reaganomics is or isn't working--this entire thing was precipitated by GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION in the housing market. Reagan was OPPOSED to artificial means by which to redistribute wealth--and that includes government restructuring of lending standards to assure unemployed welfare recipients a fair shake at a mortgage loan. Basically, the trickle-down theory is that wealth will trickle from the rich to the poor naturally over time, and government ought not to intervene to transfer wealth to the poor.
From economyprofessor.com:
Trickle Down: A theory of economic development that claims higher standards of living for the poor will develop gradually and not at the overt expense of the more affluent.
The absurd lending practices were brought about by changes to the EHO act during Clinton's term--it was determined by the powers that be in GOVERNMENT that it wasn't fair that poor people couldn't get mortgage loans just because they didn't make any money, didn't make enough money, or didn't have good credit, so the standards for lending were adjusted. For example, welfare payments and unemployment benefits counted as income for underwriting purposes--and it was considered discrimination to refuse to lend to someone because of their bad credit and lack of income. So the GOVERNMENT artificially boosted the standard of living for the poorer, lower income non-homeowners who now, thanks to that intervention, now own homes they can't afford to pay for (which the pre-Clinton standards accounted for--that someone receiving unemployment or welfare shouldn't qualify to borrow money).
Trickle down deliberately DOESN'T account for artificial means of redistributing wealth by government intervention--and THAT is exactly what inflated this market, artificially inflated profits, and is collapsing in on itself right now.
And in case anyone is wondering, the bailout isn't Reaganomics, either, and it will not stop ANYTHING from collapsing. Furthermore, what's to say that, by artificially delaying the collapse, our kids won't be about to put their kids through college and contemplating how to take care of us in our old age when the actual bottom falls out beyond repair. And that is what ought to make us feel better about this?