I have been reading some of the diaries here warning that the BushCo-proposed financial bailout of Wall Street sticks the regular-Joe American taxpayers with all of the costs but none of the benefits from doing such, that such is a fascistic corporatist power grab of Mussolini-like proportions that only benefits the irresponsible Wall Street financial robber barons whose greed brought this crisis about in the first place, that such may be an Iraq AUMF-like artificially manufactured and fraudulently sold crisis and a panicky rush to an insufficiently considered solution, etc., all good warnings.
Well, I just saw this at the Huffington Post, and I want to pass it along here:
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Sunday that the nation's credit markets remain frozen and Congress must move quickly to pass a $700 billion bailout package for financial firms. But key Democrats said the legislation needs changes to provide better protections for taxpayers and homeowners in danger of losing their homes.
Democrats said they understood the need for urgency but insisted that the measure needed to provide help for homeowners threatened with losing their homes, perhaps by changes in bankruptcy laws to allow for mortgages to be modified, and by capping pay and benefit packages for executives at the huge Wall Street firms that will be selling their bad debt to the government.
"I don't want the American taxpayer to get this bad debt and then the guy (whose company once held the bad loans) gets millions of dollars on his way out the door," said House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.
The measure that the administration sent up to Congress on Saturday is a mere three pages in length. While Paulson emphasized the need for speed, Democrats said Sunday that they could do it quickly while also adding necessary protections for taxpayers and help for people facing the threat of mortgage foreclosures.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., appearing on ABC's "This Week," said if all of this help was being directed to Wall Street there was also a need to provide help for people on Main Street.
But Paulson, also appearing on ABC, said, "We need this to be clean and to be quick."
Paulson said he was concerned that debate over adding all of those proposals would slow passage of the bill, delaying the rescue effort that is so urgently needed to get financial markets moving again.
"The biggest help we can give the American people right now is to stabilize the financial system," Paulson said.
But Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he believed there would be changes to Paulson's plan and that agreement could still be reached quickly.
Schumer said that he was pushing to get a provision where the government would receive stock warrants in return for the bailout relief and for creation of a government oversight board to supervise the huge operation, which under Paulson's plan would be run out of the Treasury Department. He said Paulson seemed receptive to changes when he had discussed his ideas with him.
"I have told him ... we need changes related to housing, we need to put the taxpayer first ahead of bondholders, shareholders," Schumer said on "Fox News Sunday."
However, Republican lawmakers said that the Democratic efforts risks slowing down a measure that was urgently needed.
"This would be the most serious financial crisis that the world has ever dealt with. It is not a time to be playing games," said House Republican Leader John Boehner.
Wow, well said Dems, well said!
Frankly, I had thought that it was a given that the Dems would just capitulate like whipped puppies to the BushCo-proposed financial bailout of Wall Street, just like the Dems did with the Iraq AUMF, but apparently not!
It appears that a nervous panicky rushed Iraq AUMF-like Dem capitulation to BushCo on this is NOT an automatic done deal!
Thus, we have to hit the phones on Monday to encourage all of our Dem Congressional reps to hold firm and NOT blindly capitulate to BushCo on this in a nervous panicky rush, and make sure that, like Schumer said, the interests of the regular Joe American taxpayers are put first over the interests of the greedy irresponsible Wall Street financial robber barons!
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