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Wall Street is in trouble and they’ve come to us- the American taxpayers, to bail them out. We know they have lots of money, but now they claim that they need more of ours or the entire economy will collapse. Let’s review. These are the same people that believe in the “free market” i.e. that allowing them to do business with no rules or oversight can solve everything and that we must keep their taxes low so they don’t pass those costs along to us. Basically, they want to do whatever they want, not be held accountable and pay as little as possible to the government and people for that privilege.
These are the same people paying CEOs upwards of $400 dollars for every dollar earned by the average worker in the U.S.A. These are the same people who want to blame homeowners for taking out mortgages they can’t afford even though they are the ones who sought, approved and profited in the billions from those very same mortgages. These are the same people that lobbied Congress to tighten bankruptcy rules even though more than half of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. These are the same people that increase their profits by shipping jobs overseas where labor is done at slave wages, there are no environmental or worker protections and, clearly, safety of the product is not of critical importance. These are the same people who overwhelmingly supported the man who is now trying to help them out of this crisis of their own making – George W. Bush.
Wall Street is in this mess because instead of doing what was good for their company or good for their country, they did what was good for their own pocketbook! Country first? I think not. They gave bad and questionable loans because of greed. A lot of people made a lot of money finding these loans, doing title work and appraisals, underwriting, bundling and selling these mortgages. They want to blame the folks that they eagerly sought out and happily gave these mortgages for this crisis, but they weren’t the ones who made a fortune in this process. Nor were they the ones who had an obligation to follow good business practices to protect their companies and the economy from the dire state we are now facing.
If we must take immediate action for the good of our economy, then we need to have control of these securities, most of which are good mortgages, so that we can get our money back and keep Wall Street from profiting directly from this bailout. We need to work with homeowners in mortgages that they cannot afford due to adjustable rates, plummeting home values and the collapsing mortgage market. Then we should work to improve the conditions for these homeowners thereby making more of these loans good investments. We need to create good jobs so that Americans can afford to live a middle class lifestyle. We need to make healthcare and education affordable. We need to invest in alternative fuels to compel the oil industry to end their gouging of the market and stop them from holding us hostage to a dwindling and dirty energy source that we consume in excess.
It’s also important to begin to regulate Wall Street because this crisis has proven, once and for all, that the free-market philosophy of The Republican Party and John McCain is an abysmal failure. When given free reign to run their own businesses they have run them and our economy into the ground. Rampant greed at the expense of the consumers and taxpayers is at an end and it’s time for ethics and consumer protection.
Clearly, George W. Bush and Secretary Paulson cannot be trusted to fix this disaster that happened on their watch and handing over taxpayer funds to those greedy crooks on Wall Street is not the answer. This problem should be solved from the bottom up, not from the top down.
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