Paul Ryan (conservative Republican, well-versed in economics, who worked on crafting yesterday's bailout package) was on Charlie's show this morning.
One of the points he made was that Monday's "bailout" program bore very few similarities to the bailout programs we heard about at the end of last week. The massive public outcry against the bailout was because we all were thinking it was last week's plan which required the taxpayers to rescue irresponsible wheelers-&-dealers. Yesterday's bill called for accountability of the Wall Street executives who botched up, as well as the requirement that Wall Street "pay up" by insuring themselves. Yesterday's bill cut the amount of the bailout in half: "only" $350 billion. Yesterday's bill required that the taxpayers be repaid by the value of the home-mortgages they were purchasing. Yesterday's bill had eliminated Barney Frank's pork and the slush funds for liberal organizations.
I believe in laissez-faire economic theory. I think the government needs to butt out. However, Congressman Ryan made a compelling point. The government has already meddled in the past in the economy. Their meddling is a big part of what got us into this mess. Stepping out now will cause the economy to lock up and send us into depression. If the government can pass a bill which will unlock the economy and set us back on the road to a more laissez-faire economy (for example, making the Wall Street fatcats insure themselves instead of having the government back up private investments). So we DO need a bailout plan. The important thing now is that we don't go back to a plan like last week's (the one with the slush funds and the taxpayers footing the bill).
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Sensenbrenner responded on the talk-shows today with his concerns. For one thing, he wants the Community Reinvestment Act to be fixed. For another, he said the $700 billion to be spent on the bailout was in a bill which allowed the deficit spending to climb to $1.3 trillion. In other words, the expenditures were actually going to be twice as much. Third, he was very concerned about the inflation that would result from the bailout. Fourth, Sensenbrenner objected to the complete socialization (that is, the government control) of the entire banking industry in this country. There were some other really excellent points, and I should've been taking notes, but these are the comments I remember at the moment.
ReplyDeleteAny form of bailout will be one step closer to a government-controlled marketplace. Even if the government got us in this place (which it shouldn't have ever been involved it), that is no excuse to give it more power to ruin us more. The market *will* recover, and better on it's own than with a government subsidy. This opens the door for any little hiccup in the market to be "fixed" by the government. The market goes up and down, we can't control it. We just have to let it run it's course.
ReplyDelete-- Sarah
P.S. I'm Paula from Looper's daughter.
Thanks for the run-down, Susan. Man I sure miss having easy access to SE Wis excellent talk-radio market.
ReplyDeleteI may have to hang around the computer this afternoon to listen to some streaming audio!