Each step the government has taken to halt/slow/help this financial crisis has

[gateley]

failed.

Will they keep on keepin' on, or realize that another approach is needed immediately?

I'm remembering the definition of insanity.

[aquart]

1. I have yet to see a single line of legislation to prevent this from happening again.

Why don't they try that?

[Romulox]

2. Wrong. Bush, Pelosi, Paulson and Frank STARTED this panic. nt

[gateley]

4. What prompted my question is that I just heard (ignore the source for a moment)

Lou Dobbs essentially saying the same thing. They've had over a year to do something about this, and Bush, Pelosi, Paulson, et al, don't know what they're doing. He said they just need to shut up and get to work on this.

I'm in agreement with that sentiment.

[Romulox]

5. It's more insidious than inaction. The US government fomented panic that did not previously exist.

Not a passive role. An active role.

[livelongandprosper]

9. But don't forget: greedy Americans who borrowed like there's no

tomorrow started this mess. Without Joe Q who wanted a house he could not afford this wouldn't have happened.
Noone forced anyone to live beyond his means. The greed in Main Street is the elephant in the room noone dares to talk about because the people are somehow always innocent. Only the few are guilty. The plebs? They just want a higher living standard. Yeah right.

[fasttense]

11. You forgot your sarcasm icon.

Spouting right wing talking points without identifying them with sarcasm will get you no where on DU.

Have you looked at the numbers?????

At a low estimate the world financial systems have lost $1 TRILLION of wealth. Now if you divide that up by about $250,000 (a high estimate of median house values in the US today), you get about 40 billion households. There are only about 300 million people in the US.

There is no possible way Joe Q could have caused this. There are just not enough of them to have overspent by $1 Trillion.

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Wrong answer!

:silly:

[Junkdrawer]

3. How to restore trust when everyone suspects everyone else is lying?

Honest Balance Sheets? Nah, that's Crazy Talk...

I know, dump in more cash. Then everyone will assume everyone else has money and is lying...

Yeah, that's the ticket...

[fasttense]

6. They keep throwing money at rich people.

They have that top down mentality stuck in their heads and can't see past it.

They need to shore up the legs of our economy.

An immediate increase in minimum wage to $10 or $15/hour would help. Salary increases to civil servants and other government employees would get some money into the middle class. Creating well-paying middle class jobs is a solution but the repukes, and a lot of the Dems, have bought off on this "free" trade crap for so long they can't think of any other way out of the financial crisis.

The repukes and "free" traders only have 3 ways to deal with the economy - tax cuts for the uber wealthy, privatization and deregulation. None of those three will work (and have actually created this economic crisis) and so they have run out of ideas and are floundering, just like the world economy.

[Demeter]

7. The Foxes Aren't Going to Do the Job--Bring in the Hounds!

Show Bush the door to Gitmo, and let Obama in early.

[KharmaTrain]

8. Reactive Rather Than Proactive...

This regime is trying to put band-aids on the problem rather than deal with the systemic failure going on. It's trying to give money to the same goons who messed up the financial system and tell them to "fix it". The big disconnect is expecting a regime that has been completely out of control and detesting any regulation to seriously address the causes of the problem. They hoped to throw money at the problem and hope it goes away. No matter, the core problems still remain.

Keep in mind there are some of us who don't believe this "crisis" is anything more than a big fleecing by the large corporates who see Gramps losing the election and they want one last crack at draining the treasury. This collapse is shaking out a lot of businesses...but it's also leading to even more consolidation...more money in even fewer hands. Paulsen's buddies at Goldman-Sachs could easily come out of this mess stronger than before...and billions of taxpayer dollars coming in to prop up their bad debt.

I think the slide is beyond this regime's control...and for many of them sitting on big sacks of our cash, why should they do a damn thing?

[LiberalEsto]

10. They don't WANT to stop it

They want the middle class to disappear.

When the Federal Reserve dropped the interest rate the other day, it clearly wasn't going to help increase borrowing in this tight credit market.

Certainly, consumers would love to obtain loans at low interest rates. But banks that are already leery of lending are even less likely to lend money when the profit on the loan is going to be smaller.

Why lock themselves into a lot of 5% car loans when the banks can hang on to the money and loan it out at 6% or 7% after the rates go back up.