http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6428.html
Do we believe any of the crooks that are in Washington now?
And why should we since all of their hands are in that same Cookie Jar
How is it we have to give up 700 billion more dollars and they can still save no homeowners home?
And now they are making it easy for sovereign wealth funds to come in and buy up
what's left of what used to be The United States of America!
And they really expect the taxpayer to foot their Garbage
There will be blood in the streets before it happens
And I guess our own kids home from Iraq will now fight their own country
or maybe they'll bring in NATO
But I'll be God Damned if I'm paying for those cock suckers bailout
and sticking future generations with the bill!
Richard C Cook is wondering why this is necessary to!
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites.
Paulson agreed that “housing values have been falling,” but he did not elaborate on why millions of Americans could no longer pay their mortgages. Cox blamed it on a “failure of lending standards” and said that the SEC had a number of ongoing investigations of fraud in the mortgage application process. Nevertheless, Paulson made it clear that his proposal was not to help distressed homeowners, saying “every homeowner won't save their home.”
And that is the crux of the problem, which explains why Paulson's proposal may keep the financial system alive but won't help anyone who was hurt by the housing bubble in the first place. Senator Dodd agreed with Paulson that, “the proposal will not help a single family save their home.” And even though he said the plan should “put an end to foreclosures and defaults,” it won't.
In fact, according to a September 22, 2008, article by Elizabeth Williamson in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Banks Rush to Shape Rescue Plan”:
“Lobbyists and financial-services executives are working deep connections within the administration to ensure as many institutions as possible benefit from a $700 billion federal mechanism to buy distressed assets, then sell them off in better times. In a particularly controversial move, they also oppose proposals by Democrats in Congress to provide mortgage reductions for homeowners facing bankruptcy. Bankers say such a move would raise rates for mortgage seekers, as banks factor in the possibility that a loan would be restructured in court.”
The article quoted a bank industry lobbyist: “How you publicly oppose loan modifications and bankruptcy law while at the same time advocating a huge taxpayer bailout is beyond me. Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.”
The committee never addressed the issue of why the bankers would oppose homeowner relief. Could it be that they actually favor foreclosures? Could it be that a situation where millions of foreclosed homes across America can be bought today for dimes on the dollar is somehow to their advantage? Or to the advantage of other investors who are now working the U.S. foreclosure markets, such as foreign sovereign equity funds? These questions did not come up at the Banking Committee's hearing, though they should have.
Nor did anyone talk about why the housing bubble arose in the first place, though the fact is that the Bush administration and Federal Reserve combined to generate it to get the nation out of the 2000-2001 recession. At the time, Bush needed money and could not afford the continued decline of federal tax revenues. He needed the money to pay for his tax cuts for the rich enacted in March 2001 and for his wars in the Middle East, which started with the invasion of Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
Nor did the committee address the fact that fixing the failed economic system will not repair an economy where consumer purchasing power has been devastated over the last generation by continued export of the nation's manufacturing job base to other countries. The one senator who even touched on this point was Tim Johnson, who said “We need sustainable economic growth.”
But no one asked how this was possible with a recession on its way. Indeed, the “R” word was never mentioned, though Bernanke said several times that the Paulson plan would help as “the economy recovers.”
Obviously a real solution would involve not only homeowner relief and taxpayer guarantees for a controlled bailout, but also rebuilding the U.S. economy. But no one wanted to talk about that today. Maybe it's because this latest piece of “mortgage fraud” is designed mainly to keep the economy afloat until the presidential election, because a collapse would drag down John McCain and the Republicans with it. And heaven forbid that anything should ever be proposed that would threaten the stranglehold the banking industry has over every man, woman, and child in America.
By Richard C. Cook
http:// www.richardccook.com
Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform will be published soon by Tendril Press. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age , called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years . ” His Challenger website is at www.richardccook.com . A new economics website at www.RealSustainableLiving.com is upcoming with partner/author Susan Boskey. To get on his mailing list, for questions and comments, or to pre-purchase copies of his new book, please write EconomicSanity@gmail.com .
