PRIVATIZE THE BAILOUT

Government of the Business .. By the Business
And FOR the Wealthy

Imagine for a moment you are on another planet. You’re watching some of the inhabitants trying to move some freight in a little vehicle with four wheels. Four square wheels.

It’s hopeless. They finally stop. Others show up and they all meet in a circle with a lot of gesturing and discussion. They settle on one suggestion: change the setup to three wheels. They do this and a few hours later, try again. Thus the struggle continues. The obvious stumbling block is that they are making a huge effort to improve the vehicle, but within the parameters of the failure.

Is that what we’re witnessing right now in Washington? The pure solution to this so-called “bailout” of the failed banks is to allow business to put up the billions, post the money and get busy. For years republicans have been preaching that the private sector can do all things better than the government. The market is magic, they tell us. It can solve all problems, if left alone. Their unwavering mantra has been “...Government is the problem.” OK – prove it. Get Exxon Mobile, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and a lot of their other colleagues together, raise the money and PRIVATIZE THE BAILOUT. That group can easily raise this small amount of capital needed, to “save” the country. Hell, they’ve made more than that in a couple of their wars: Vietnam and now Iraq.

Part of their pitch to the American people to fund this charade is that in this Paulson caper the government money will be used to buy up all the troubled assets, at a rock bottom price of course. Then, they tell us they can sit on them for a bit until the economy returns to normal (thanks to the all-controlling market that republicans continue to pray to). Then they will simply sell these assets for a reasonable price, and not only get the bailout money back, but probably make a nice profit. Good – that’s what the republican party and the business community is about – maximizing profits.

This is so obviously not the answer to this mess, because these bankers are swimming in a pool of bad loans. When things were riding high, when risky dealing was the plan of the day (with no oversight) these bankers and their congressional cheerleaders made some obscene profits. But now that their risky business has them in this hole, they expect the American PEOPLE to provide the fix, the “bailout.” How do they just put this solution out there as gospel, expecting us to accept it as the only real solution? Isn’t that like the inhabitants of Mars with their square wheels? They slog blindly onward, not even considering an alternate solution, just continue to tweak endlessly on the wrong solution, which has proven so far to be deficient in success. The gutless opposition in Congress has so far done that for what, about $85 Billion?

If you recall, starting in October 2002 these same bit players said we needed to HURRY and grant a less-than-honest (brain-damaged?) president the authority to use force, as he saw fit. That’s what the vote was for: the authority, not a declaration of war. We all know how well that worked out. NOW, using WMD on us again, (Weapons of Money Distraction) we’re told again to HURRY UP – sign the instrument to save America from panic and chaos. This time the instrument stipulates the authority to use money in any way they see fit. Like last time, we’re not even allowed to question their decisions, or know anything about it. The chief stipulator this is time is a graduate of the very banking system that created the mess: Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs. As if all this weren’t a big enough intellectual insult to us, the Paulson crowd - once they’re empowered by the signatures on their instrument – will hire the same bankers who caused the meltdown, to act as ”consultants” to clean it up! These consultants will lend us their expertise for a consulting fee, starting at $150K a week, on up, and some of these opportunists will ask for, and receive, a percentage of the gains. But it’s 7th grade logic that Wall Street's best and brightest are not exactly geniuses at asset or mortgage valuation; if they had, we wouldn't be where we are. So they are making sure they have it both ways – why must we (American people) constantly have to struggle under incompetence and lack of courage (lack of honesty?) with our representatives?

And the straw that should be breaking the camel’s back is the stipulation that we can’t object – as to who they hire, or what fees will be paid to them for services. It looks like they’re going to publish this turkey – at least that’s what the talking heads on television are saying. We’ll see. EVERY ONE of us should read EVERY WORD of it once it’s done, if they do it. It is found here:
financialservices.house.gov

After you know every word in it, you should find out how your own Senator
or Congressperson voted. In my personal case, where I live we have neither a Senator nor a Congressman, but you should know exactly how yours votes on this thing if it comes to that.

Pretty serious stuff, huh? The republicans - with their steamroller, Lee Atwater/Karl Rove playbook - just expect this kind of thing to pass and become law, and they want it done NOW. Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, held up letters from over two hundred of the nation’s most knowledgeable economists, from Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale, University of Chicago, the Wharton school of Economics, etc. and their advice was an overwhelming warning: Do NOT pass this plan. It appears that some plan is needed, but DO NOT pass this turkey in its present form. Offer it to the private sector – that’s the only grownup view that will satisfy all of us, in my view.

All we have to do is behave like grownups in this matter. We force those who created the mess to clean it up. We should sternly resist and firmly reject this republican power play, this in-your-face, stiff arm, preposterous power grab unless it is drastically changed, which stipulates that we should allow them to continue to:

Privatize the profits, but socialize the losses.

Come on, guys, we’re smarter than that, aren’t we?