Who To Bail Out
Mar 28th, 2008 at 6:14 am by Susie
Once again, the Republicans want to socialize their losses - to the exclusion of everyone else’s:
For now, the parties seem to be worlds apart. This week, the two Democratic presidential contenders seized on the deepening economic crisis and proposed broad government rescue plans for homeowners that would each cost about $30 billion.
The Bush administration dismissed such ideas as bailouts and vowed to veto even modest Democratic bills to help homeowners. Mr. McCain asserted this week that “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.”
In practice, the Democrats have not really had to confront the full fury and magnitude of the crisis. Measured in dollars, their biggest proposals are small compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve has decided to lend to struggling institutions, and compared with the magnitude of losses in home values and defaulted mortgages.
Mr. McCain and the Bush administration, meanwhile, have staunchly supported one of the biggest government interventions in the last century: the Federal Reserve’s decision to lend as much as $400 billion at rock-bottom rates to banks and Wall Street firms.
The Fed’s rescue operation involves a sum many times more than Democrats proposed spending on homeowners, and it comes on top of a host of other injections of government money into the economy. First came the bipartisan economic stimulus package, which this year alone will provide about $152 billion in tax rebates and temporary tax cuts to help spur consumption.
Then came a series of moves to greatly expand the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage finance companies.
And this week, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board decided to lend an extra $100 billion to member banks for mortgage financing.
In a speech this week, Mrs. Clinton compared Mr. McCain’s approach to that of Herbert Hoover, and said, “I don’t think we can afford four more years of that kind of inaction.” Mr. Obama, laying down his own marker on Thursday, declared that “the free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get.”
Fine, Susie. Let’s get rid of all national socialism, subsidized healthcare, worker’s compensation for injuries, tax subsidized social offsets, such as feel good carbon trading psychological bailouts, tax exemptions for religious propaganda, and faith based liberal think tanks; besides, we need more tank crews than diaper changing lap top warriors. Ditto for the NIH and socialized state support for the Pisschrist. Get rid of the entire artistic fascist bargain, it works for me–no more Internet. We need a brilliant black president who, for twenty years, admired his “brilliant” black racist pastor without a clue to his afrocentric fascist philosphy; preceptive transformational democrats do social justice so well, yet few of them show up to stop the genocide in Darfur. Where’s Farakan when you need him? However, canceling state supported abortions means more black criminals down the road, Jack. Oops. Suburban guerrilla eugenics is a bitch.