The Impeachment Hearing Room

“Controversial Pelosi Bailout Speech”?

Damn the Truth Hurts in Washington.

Republicans blamed the failure of the financial rescue bill partly on remarks by the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. That is nothing more than spin cover for their failure/inability to deliver the votes with “Gingrich ideologists”, Election/ re-election threatened, and the gamblers, on one more chance to get some breaks they want in the package. I don’t spend any time defending Pelosi, but this time she told the truth, albeit, omitting the complicity of Democrats in this mess.

What should happen? Congressional Democrats should put a hold on any action until after Election Day!

No Bailout…A Loan Program and a Self-Help Tough Love Package Instead.

Simple solution: Make the money hand out “Loans” with $350bn set aside as the first wave of infusion with a 5 year payback with interest and review on the institutions books before any award of cash.

(1) That will cut down the requests as many will elect to solve their own problems within their institutions rather than risk exposure.

(2) Keep the FDIC in the role of directing traffic in allowing injured institutions to be swallowed up by healthy ones, knowing full well that in 3 to 5 years we should be about the task of breaking up the emerging new giants after they have served the purpose of “taking out the trash”.

(3) Keep the “Cap the CEO salary” proviso in place. That will motivate several to start cleaning up their own houses as a matter of survival. Given a LOAN based approach and cooked books exposure. As I said satirically last night; some of these CEOs are worth their weight in Gold so let’s put them on the Gold Standard, mindful of the fact that as the economy stabilizes and reenergizes that the price of gold will go down…chuckle.

(4) Not one penny to the Fat Cat Investors. They went to the Wall Street Casino; they lost, and that is the nature of gambling. We are not obligated to give them anything to make them feel better. That is one part of “Economic Darwinism” and so be it!

The goals should be that having enough money available to meet the “Real” need of restored liquidity on a non-giveaway basis with examination, exposure and transparent accountability, forcing those with their hands out to have second thoughts and motivated to go to work within and given the fact that the Congress is “Panic Driven” to do something, soon; we should make sure that the framework for reregulation is contained in any legislation and we ought to be prepared to remain vigilant in the aftermath for a essential break up of new financial giants whose existence should be very short lived.

Whatever the government has vacuumed up in nationalization of trash should as converted and resold should be at the profit of the people. Just some thoughts, given the fact that Congress will act; we should take a page out of their, and the corporate books, and see to that any package protects our asses. We can lend; they can bend and they can work at resolution rather than stand in the bailout gimme line.

The single greatest market motivator is confidence; Yep one hell of a Casino and Confidence Game. Let’s make them confident of the fact that if they want their money back; earn it. Confident that there is some help, and confident that they are not going to have it their way; they will act.

For those who don’t want to do anything on behalf of the financial institutions and Wall Street; I can only say Congress will act and if we can kick them around to a responsible “Loan” program only while putting in place the foundation for re-regulation; we will be well served.

If we don’t, as we emerge from the mess we will do so at great peril with new financial giants in place free as a bird to fly with no regulation, government enforcement, supervision or accountability. We will have cancelled the current play and reopened it with a new cast and a new name with new backers. That is not acceptable!

And A Personal PS: I would make it a precondition on any money shifted to the America Automotive Industry, that they get nothing unless they set aside and begin an R&D program on the development, production and sale of a non-plug-in Electric engine car. They want something…fine…we need something and it’s time they act on our need!

Madam Speaker, when was the last time someone asked you for $700bn?

It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration's failed economic policies: policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.

Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital. But left to its own devices, it has created chaos.

That chaos is the dismal picture painted by Treasury Secretary [Henry)] Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman [Ben] Bernanke a week and a half ago in the Capitol. As they pointed out, we confront a crisis of historic magnitude that has the ability to do serious injury not simply to our economy but to the American people; not just to Wall Street, but to everyday Americans on Main Street.

It is our responsibility today, to help avert that catastrophic outcome. Let us be clear: This is a crisis caused on Wall Street. But it is a crisis that reaches to Main Street in every city and town of the United States.

It is a crisis that freezes credit, causes families to lose their homes, cripples small businesses, and makes it harder to find jobs. It is a crisis that never had to happen. It is now the duty of every member of this body to recognise that the failure to act responsibly, with full protections for the American taxpayer, would compound the damage already done to the financial security of millions of American families.

Over the past several days, we have worked with our Republican colleagues to fashion an alternative to the original plan of the Bush administration.

I must recognize the outstanding leadership provided by [the chairman of the House financial services committee and Democrat of Massachusetts] Barney Frank, whose enormous intellectual and strategic abilities have never before been so urgently needed, or so widely admired.

I also want to recognize [Illinois Democratic Republican] Rahm Emanuel, who combined his deep knowledge of financial institutions with his pragmatic policy experience to resolve key disagreements.

Secretary Paulson deserves credit for working day and night to help reach an agreement, and for his flexibility in negotiating changes to his original proposal.

Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street.

The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardise the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilization bill.

So we insisted that this bill contain several key provisions. This legislation must contain independent and ongoing oversight to ensure that the recovery program is managed with full transparency and strict accountability.

The legislation must do everything possible to allow as many people to stay in their homes rather than face foreclosure.

The corporate CEOs whose companies will benefit from the public's participation in this recovery must not benefit by exorbitant salaries and golden parachute retirement bonuses.

Our message to Wall Street is this: the party is over. The era of golden parachutes for high-flying Wall Street operators is over. No longer will the US taxpayer bailout the recklessness of Wall Street. The taxpayers who bear the risk in this recovery must share in the upside as the economy recovers.

And should this program not pay for itself, the financial institutions that benefited, not the taxpayers, must bear responsibility for making up the difference.

These were the Democratic demands to safeguard the American taxpayer, to help the economy recover, and to impose tough accountability as a central component of this recovery effort.

This legislation is not the end of congressional activity on this crisis. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will continue to hold investigative and oversight hearings to find out how the crisis developed, where mistakes were made, and how the recovery must be managed to protect the middle class and the American taxpayer.

With passage of this legislation today, we can begin the difficult job of turning our economy around, of helping those who depend on a growing economy and stable financial institutions for a secure retirement, for the education of their children, for jobs and small business credit.

Today we must act for those Americans, for Main Street, and we must act now, with the bipartisan spirit of cooperation which allowed us to fashion this legislation.

This not enough. We are also working to restore our nation's economic strength by passing a new economic recovery stimulus package, a robust, job-creating bill that will help Americans struggling with high prices, get our economy back on track and renew the American dream.

Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years, with the failed economic leadership that has left us less capable of meeting the challenges of the future.

We choose a different path. In the New Year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.

You Must Read This!

This Week In Crisis Or Confusion?

THE END OF FREE-MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM

American News Project. Com Links

http://americannewsproject.com

The end of free-market fundamentalism

http://americannewsproject.com/node/130

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1463341016/bctid1817750851 

Amid the chaos and chatter about this week's financial bailout, one clear theme emerged in some quarters: The era of free-market fundamentalism is over. But is it, really?

SEE ALL THE REAL NEWS VIDEOS ON AMERICA’S BAILOUT ANGER!

(75 Quality Videos As Well As These:)

"Raw capitalism is dead." -- Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

This Is What American Needs To See And Here! 

Help take on the military industrial complex

 "Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?" -- President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations

I'm not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks" in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

That is, if Cheney and Bush don't take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don't kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Timesrevelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn't there.

Like I said: antennae.

They've come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering thegreatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday's failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it's pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.

And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan -- head on, and all over again.

Meet the New Rome, Same as the Old Rome

"Franklin Roosevelt had to save capitalism from itself," Los Angeles Times business editor Tom Petruno told me as Washington Mutual and Wachovia became the latest banking dominoes to fall. "Is history repeating?"

Indeed, it is, as one could tell from the repetitive usage of loaded terms and phrases like "Great Depression," "meltdown," "apocalypse," "Armageddon" and more to describe the just-on-time cratering of the American economy. After the strange bedfellows in both parties torpedoed Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's so-called bailout, more than $1 trillion of market value in American equities disappeared in a single day. The Dow Jones average set a record for quickest suicide dive in a single day. Other indexes sunk to multiyear lows, wiping out years of value, and stocks across the board went negative like Ann Coulter. In fact, the only major stock that actually advanced on Monday was Campbell Soup.

Can there be a more fitting metaphor for the American economy stuck beneath the Bush administration's thumb?

But the reruns, and their loaded terminology, are merging: Bush himself is just another iteration of the infamous "New World Order"instituted by his father while trying to, what else, convince the American public that it needed to go to war against Saddam Hussein. The revisionism is transparent, befitting a government that cares nothing of what its people actually think. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" recently juxtaposed Bush's address on the financial cataclysm with his pre-invasion speech in 2003 and found -- surprise! -- they were exactly the same.

The Fucking Republican Kids Have Been Playing In The Vault And Stealing Damn Near Everything And Bush Expects Us To Ante Up And Refill The Vault For Them.

And This Too...