Bailout or surrender?

The Treasury Secretary's proposal to stave off the eminent collapse of our financial system represents a unique opportunity to begin a restructuring that will lessen the power of the international corporations and ultra-rich, reestablishing principles that have guided this country's best days since the Pilgrims tripped over the rocks at Plymouth. It is nothing less than a test of Lincoln's maxim that the U.S. should be a government "of the people" - of all the people, not just the obscenely wealthy and well-connected ones.

You can look at it from a conservative, liberal, libertarian, main street view - the plan as presently stated reeks, rewarding not just derelict behavior but the financial equivalent of mass murder and terrorism. Lacking even the simplest guarantees and oversights, it is little better than legalized robbery of common taxpayers, future as well as present.

And with the lobbyists working overtime, maybe there's no hope.

2 comments:

jd said...

Paulson seems to think he's J.P. Morgan . . . the difference being that Morgan was playing (largely) with his own money, and that of his rich friends.
Oh . . .

jd said...

And with all due respect to my friends in the Democratic Party . . . all they seem to be talking about is tarting up this obese hog with a few feel-good but do-nothing sops. Delay a foreclosure here, bring a treasury functionary to congress for pillorying there - while the middle class burns and burns . . .