"Economic Downturns"

[wolven7]

Not my words, but Important words, stolen from oletheros:

"so this is important and i'm sorry to keep clogging up your attention with this, but i like living the life that i have built and i'm sure that you do, too.

"if you haven't been following the news, the situation is as follows: the republican congress at the beginning of the decade passed laws that gutted wall street regulations. this caused banks to take on riskier investments. now those risks have come home to roost. the republican administration would like to use the treasury (your money) to bail out the people who gambled poorly on wall street, to the tune of 700 billion dollars. billion. with a b. for easy math, that means that each and every one of you taxpayers would be on the hook for $2000 to bail these guys out.

"the secretary of the treasury has floated a plan that he wants congress to pass without debate. mind you, this plan does not include any kind of punative measures towards the people who gambled poorly because the companies that need our money might not participate.

"now, senator dodd of connecticut has come up with an alternative plan, which includes all kinds of things that the secretary of the treasury doesn't want, like oversight and punative actions against executives who made bad business decisions. the full text of this bill can be found here.

"now, you're probably asking what you can do. good question. you can contact your elected represetantives in congress and the senate and tell them that you would prefer that they back senator dodd's proposal instead of secretary of the treasury paulson's proposal. that's it. you are the people. you elected these people. in theory, they are supposed to do what you tell them to do, so click those links and tell them.

"i'm sorry to have to get up on my soapbox, but the time for bread and circuses has passed. go back to work and try not to get too freaked out by this whole thing."

Here's my response:
"My name is Damien Williams, and I am a registered voter. I, along with my roommates, friends, and family will be paying very close attention to what happens with 70% of a TRILLION dollars of the people's money, over the next few days. While Secretary Paulson is an intelligent and honourable man, Senator Dodd's proposal includes necessary oversight measures that will allow the American People the opportunity to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.

"If you have a problem with this proposal, please tell the people what that problem is in a clear, concise manner, and propose something you think will work better. But please remember, we are all watching, very closely. THIS-- not the banks themselves-- is too important to fail.

"All the very best,

"Damien Williams"

Comments

[wyldkyss.livejournal.com]

Because I'm not good at drafting letters, do you mind if I just vary upon your own?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

No problem with it, at all. That's part of why I posted it. Good luck.

[wyldkyss.livejournal.com]

I figured as much, but I like to ask. And off it goes...

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the courtesy :)

And Awesome.

[arcstone.livejournal.com]

Your friend is not exactly correct. As a matter of fact placing blame on the Republicans is the opposite of the truth. While not entirely innocent, the Republicans had little to do with this current state of affairs. Real estate markets have a cause/effect span of decades, and only take shape years later, unlike the 4-6 yrs. of many other markets.

Democratic Congress over-regulated, democratic initiatives such as the Community Reinvestment Act (On the books as of `77, but Clinton's adjustments in `95 is the main focus) forced the banks to enter into the riskier loans, and there is only an ease of tax burden on the part of the Republicans on the other side. While the Republicans were in office, they did cut taxes on wall street (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801499.html) which did stimulate the economy, but they fell short of long term growth. Overall, they did better than the democrats has proposed to do at that time - at that's coming from top economists (archive article linked). The Republicans later pushed for an ease of tax burden after the last crisis which gave us the horror and inefficiency of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. If you want, I can give you a SLEW of articles to show you what a waste of time, money, and contribution to economic depression it has been.

Paulson is a Bush appointee, granted. But the Republicans I like hate him with as much fire as I do. The Republican good ol' boys in public office now are despised and loathed by every by-the-book Republican out there. They are big-government, corporate sponsored RINOS (Republican In Name Only). And I'd like to add for what its worth that McCain is not like any of these Bush-style Reds. Just sayin'.

p.s. I have already written both GA Senators and my Congressional Rep. Hank Johnson telling them that I will not support them if they vote to bail out these companies.

p.p.s. If you want real change, vote for Allen Buckley. (http://www.buckleyforsenate.com/) Seriously, look at the dude's website and do your homework. I think if I can get enough fiscal repuiblicans over on my side and democrats can face facts and know that a Democratic congressman is not going to win in GA, a Libertarian may have a prayer of clinching it. Just a thought. You want a good guy in office, I recommend him. He used to work here at my firm. Good guy.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

This was not a post about fault. This was about knowing that these people Work For You.

This is going to go through. No it's not pretty, and yes it is far from good, but it is going to happen, because it's this, or we all don't eat. Had we let the first two touch the stove and Fail, we wouldn't be here. The others would have most likely learned their lesson. But, for many reasons, we didn't.

A bailout is far from ideal, and it is, in many ways, antithetical to the will of the American People; but if it's Going to happen, we should at least make sure it doesn't KEEP happening. Make sure we don't bail these people out and Still fail, as a country.

[arcstone.livejournal.com]

"if you haven't been following the news, the situation is as follows: the republican congress at the beginning of the decade passed laws that gutted wall street regulations. this caused banks to take on riskier investments. now those risks have come home to roost. the republican administration would like to use the treasury (your money) to bail out the people who gambled poorly on wall street, to the tune of 700 billion dollars. billion. with a b.

That sounded like assignment of blame to me. Hence my response for the other side.

Also, I do not think this latest bailout is necessary, nor do I think it will pass if the public voices their opinion like they did over the Amnesty Bill incident last year. The voice of the people can push this through and I think that it can be done.

The bailout of Fannie and Freddie? Sure, I conceede that was a necessary evil. However, if we allow our government to "loan" money out to every major investment bank that goes belly up (and I hate to even use the term "loan" with our government being in such debt as it is), then at what point do we compromise our capitalist economic system and finally have that last nail in the coffin that FDR dug for us when we began the socialist breadline?

Just some thoughts to spark debate. Enjoy.

[oletheros.livejournal.com]

i got my information from this article.

from page 3: Here in the United States, the trend of deregulation culminated in 1999 with the death of the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal-era legislation that had forced financial institutions to choose between investment banking and commercial lending. Meanwhile, international bodies like the WTO and the IMF were pressuring the governments of all countries to drop their controls on the flow of cash and goods.

the repeal of the glass-steagall act was repealed due to the actions of phil gramm, who is a republican.

[arcstone.livejournal.com]

Introduced by Gramm in the Senate and Leach in the House, correct that both were Republicans.

However, the repeal of the Glass-Stegal Act was passed in a bipartisan committe and was voted veto-proof from both sides. So again, both political parties had a hand in the dismissal of the Act. Act's dismissal was signed by Clinton, and the Republicans had majority at the time, but NOT veto-proof majority. MANY Democrats signed onto the same belief that the repeal of the Act would stimulate the US economy as they all saw their jobs being shipped overseas to international financial institutions and investors.

(Wikipedia sums it up here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act#Repeal_of_the_Act), with good arguments for either side of the debate as to the pros/cons)

In my opinion, most New Deal-era acts should be done away with. And the article you linked is pretty interesting, and quite lengthy. And while not full of crap, I think the points made were not overtly socialist, but very socalist leaning.

Do I agree? To many points raised, a vehement yes. Capitalism is certainly dying. But in my opinion, its cancer is government, not the investor-class that the wealth-envy author claims.

Do I want the bailout? Hell no. Capatalism only works when the rich gamble and lose. They need to loose their shirts and get tossed on the streets, and those who have played it safe and didn't put all their assests in such a risky investment see their strategy pay off.

I hate the "stimulus checks," hate the bailouts of Fannie, Freddie, AIG, and now this mess that's being proposed. Things need to break before they can be put back together in a better way.

This process of running to "Mommy Government" when the chips are down started in the Depression - and albeit it was necessary to do so then - but it has never returned to what America was: a community of self-reliant states with a small but strong federal system to unite them as a whole, not support them upright from cradle to grave.

[oletheros.livejournal.com]

i've said it elsewhere and i'll say it here: bailing out investors for doing bad business is wrong. i don't think we should be doing any of it. however, if it is going to happen, i would prefer that it happen with full transparency and with punative action against the people who fucked things up. giving them golden parachutes for failure does not make their sucessors want to improve.

what's more, giving money to private industry goes against every fiber of fiscal conservatism that i thought republicans believed in. in essence, this is betraying the true roots of the party and i'm astonished that anyone on that side of the aisle is going along with it.

[arcstone.livejournal.com]

Hence why I wrote our Republican Senators and told them of my violent disagreement and that any support of it would be counter-productive of the central tennants of the party. I hope it may or may not get the point accross, we'll see.

Yeah, I am quite agreed with that position.

Hence why I'm voting Buckley for senate.