I can’t believe that Congress and other forms of government can come together to save a bunch of rich people on Wall St. and not come together to get Health care for all, or a real energy plan, or something for the people - all of the people! I see the actions of the government as clearly showing the preference for the rich and ignoring the middle class and poor. This country needs, desperately needs, new leadership!!

Yup. Can’t get government involved in the market for health care. Who know what damage we’d do? But it’s fine to meddle in the markets to stop short selling on financials. Or just buy up all the bad debt.

And if anyone questions you, tell them it is financial terrorism. (An extraordinary claim like that requires extraordinary evidence.)

Is this the same government that would fight tooth and nail against extending unemployment benefits by a few weeks? I hardly recognize them anymore. I think the taxpayer must demand something in return. The price should be the national healthcare. Or free houses for the people who were brutally priced out of the market during 2000-2005. Something should trickle down over here finally, no?

This is class warfare, and it’s incredible. I agree with all of the above comments! If any of these politicians doesn’t mention national health care, or education benefits, or something that actually might benefit the middle class, then they get out of the way!

I’ve written 4 senators, 6 congressmen, and even the white house (I doubt they care) to expess my displeasure. Free market? What a farce!

I can’t believe that Congress and other forms of government can come together to save a bunch of rich people on Wall St. and not come together to get Health care for all

I wish people would get a clue about this. These extraordinary measures are NOT to “save a bunch of rich people on Wall St”. They are to prevent the entire economy from imploding and resulting in millions of people losing their jobs, and business grinding to a halt.

Is that what you want? Just to teach a lesson to rich fat cats you’d be willing for you and your neighbors to lose your jobs and see Main Street get shuttered?

“Is that what you want? Just to teach a lesson to rich fat cats you’d be willing for you and your neighbors to lose your jobs and see Main Street get shuttered?”

I think people start recognizing that they have been taken for a ride by Republicans who keep saying: “how in the world are we to pay for the universal healthcare?” or “don’t raise our taxes and you will get benefits trickled down on you.” This should be the turning point. Pay the ransom. Fine. But going forward everybody pays their fair share of taxes and the laws should be put on the books to restraint the finaniers and big business. And serious discussion should start on the issue of affordable healthcare, education, retirment at a decent age. I guess that’s what people want.

In this financial crisis the reasons given for the “root” of the problem is sub prime mortgages and their associated CDFS, CDO, and other derivatives. Let’s be clear the democratic Clinton’s administrations repeal of the Glass Steagall Act followed by the Republican administrations relaxation of CFTC oversight of derivatives (passed pre-Christmas congressional break December 15, 2000 under the direction of McCain’s former economic advisor guru Phil Graham) clearly place culpability in the lap of both parties and finger pointing at one another will achieve nothing.

Still, there is a a deeper underlying “root” to our financial ills. It must be asked why were these legislation sought in the first place and the answer is not merely greed. In a monetary system that is based on the impossible contract dilemma of money creation through credit issuance our nation has approached a VELOCITY OF MONEY supply that had to seek out ways to move debt risk off book, while still issuing it in order to expand the economy in order to avoid ANY economic pain from purging BAD economic decisions. Any graph of the now non-reported M3 money supply and its hyperbolic rise into a straight up curve line illustrates the problem. Any lessening of the RATE of the expansion of money supply would result in an economic slow down.

And, one more very important point, in whatever “remedy” the banking elite backed minions may propose it has to be asked where is the ACCOUNTABILITY for this mess. Where is the accountability for the 911 attacks, the faulty rationals for initiating the Iraq war and every other “crisis” we the taxpayers have been dragged into. Right now the only accountable ones are everyone’s grandchildren and that is moral albatross for our generation.

Please consider having Ellen Hogsdon Brown, author of Web of Debt on your program to explain what is really going on eith the Federal Reserve and the Banking Elites.

Thanks Peter…a voice of reason.

Let’s stop being jealous of rich people and their big corporations. There are always going to be rich people. They are always going to get more than their fair share. Lawmakers will always listen to rich people because that is how they got elected and how they stay in office. Those are the facts.

The big picture is that tens of thousands of normal people with normal salaries work for these companies. Thousands more normal people have shares of these companies in 401k plans. When the companies do well, normal people do well.

Repent! Repent and invest no more!! Profit is mine, sayeth … wait, who gets the taxpayer’s money this time?!! I’ll have to check who made out ~20 years ago with the S&L debacle - its basically the same problem so its likely to be the same robber barons that benefit this time (or their children).

My plan is to avoid their plan!

I’d like to have a job where I can retire with millions of dollars after only a few years of taking advantage of my customers, as well as the US Taxpayer. Granted, the same holds true for politicians in D.C., but that takes more work because we Taxpayers have to want to be taken advantage of by them (its called voting for the least-worst candidate)! Then again, getting elected to D.C. results in benefits, especially one hell of health plan, that are not available to the rest of us voters…

So, here is my plan:

I’ll start by getting elected to D.C., and once my benefits are secure, I’ll get one of those high-paying jobs related to Wall Street (CEO, Lobbyist, et al., despite having no other qualifications save being an ex-politician) where I can take advantage of my former constituents while making several million dollars. Think of it, I could then return home to MA without the need to work, have plenty of cash, a pension with health benefits, and set the thermostat to whatever I want (because the taxpayers have, in fact, bankrolled my standard of living and I wouldn’t need to care about things like alternative energy or having spent 600 billion dollars to protect the flow of oil)! Sure, hardly original, but its a plan that has withstood the test of time!!!!

If only I could bring myself to be around politicians! Wait a minute - I forgot, members of congress don’t need to actually show up to vote - sweet!

VOTE for me! VOTE for me! VOTE for me!

Steve - the candidate for change.

I have no sympathy for any hedge fund manager, investment banker, whatsoever, and them falling to pieces is not going to impact me because I can work in a number of industries where as they’ve rarely worked a day in their lives.

I agree that basically since Reagan we’ve had this, trust this “market” and its players and everybody will do great - the trickle down theory - and it’s a bunch of crap. All it’s done is create 3rd world inequality, extraordinary division between people, and leave the middle class and poor way behind. It’s also been full of excuses as to why we can’t have national health care, or a GI bill (hello!!) for the kids who fought overseas, or anything else that doesn’t go to the top 1/10 of 1 percent!

I’ve had enough…

“When the companies do well, normal people do well.”

It seems obvious. However, it can also be said that “as the companies do better and better, normal people do worse and worse.” It can also be said that “when the companies do badly their management makes out fine, while normal people lose their shirts” Those are facts. Do they have to be? Voice of reason - what say you?

The language surrounding how the market got in this situation has been far to passive and far too general. 50 attorneys general asked for regulation of the subprime mortgage market that started these dominoes moving and the Bush administration actively refused to regulate them and put in place regulations which overrode state consumer protection laws regulating. No one was asleep and noone can stand around saying “shocked, shocked”

Does anyone have any idea where McCain and/or other conservatives have left off in their promotion of privatization of the Social Security system given the failure of the stock market and our financial system?

I call B.S. when it’s stated that we should be sad for all the poor guys that lost millions this week!

Most of them drew salaries commissions and bonuses. The big losses were held by the companies that paid them. They were isolated by the corporation from the mistakes they made.

Will anyone hold them responsible?

If I did this it would be called theft or fraud.

I remember during Bush’s first term, many economists were concerned about the “starve the beast” mentality of the administration. It was the Grover Norquist effect, so to speak. Now, after tax cuts for the wealthy, a very expensive war in Iraq, huge profits for Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil, and the lack of regulation on Wall St., the effect is a nation facing severe economic crisis. Is this “mission accomplished”? Was this an intentional effort to bankrupt our government?
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it appears the “small government” advocates have achieved a huge victory.

One guest just said “you people, worker bees, saying ‘the taxpayer’s going to pay’ [etc.]”

Good, lord! What a snob. He’s there saying that “most of the money lost this week” has been lost by rich people. And that the “taxpayer who’s going to pay” means mostly money paid by rich people.

So what? What does that matter when those few rich people are left with millions in personal assets with which to regroup, but that 99% of the population–we “worker bees”–lost an amount of money that while only representing, say, 30% of the total loss, also represented an amount that each of those individual people had struggled for years and years to earn, and that lacking significant personal capital, could take them years or decades to re-earn.

How much you lose is much less important than how much you have left!

One important point that Obama MUST start trumpeting…..It will be the GOVERNMENT that will solve this problem that was created by the PRIVATE SECTOR!!! NOW who is the problem?!

Just this once, I agree with Peter Nelson. While I do advocate deep reform to get our priorities straight (i.e. the government should serve the ordinary citizen first), right now we have the system we have and extraordinary action was necessary. And each and every American benefits because the alternative really was a world-wide recession.

And a little reality check - do none of the listeners have money in the stock market and aren’t they affected by commodity prices one way or another? My blood and “adopted” families, here and abroad (in Peru and Poland), all depend on these one way or another. And in this whole chain, only one person (my 93-year old Dad)had a real American middle class salary and even his career was shortened because he came to the U.S. as an adult immigrant. All the rest of us earned less or are too young to earn money.
So, I do want serious reforms but I am not going pretend that my skin and the skins of many other people close to me have been saved. For now.

I said this before…. Historical figures other than FDR have major lessons to teach at this time. Louis Brandeis is my man when it comes to political economics.

And the solution to all this is more liquidity. More money in the system, it’s a crisis of confidence.

No matter the problem more money and borrowing money is the solution. At some point (probably already past) more money is not the solution.

One of the today’s guests just asserted that John Thain did well for M. Lynch over the weekend, by selling the company thereby avoiding bankruptcy.

Should Thain, or any of the other top bankers, be lauded for taking extraordinary risks, betting that real estate prices would never go down, being obscenely overleveraged? For being at the helm of these storied companies as the companies disappear?

A massive government bureaucracy is going to have to be established to oversee the maintenance, sale and handling of trillions of dollars of properties that are being acquired by all of these bailouts (beginning with the Fan Mae and Fred Mac bailouts). This huge new bureaucracy is also going to cost the tax payer huge amounts, not to mention the interest we’ll pay to borrow all of the money for the buyouts. No one in the media has mentioned even once that this huge entity will have to come into being or what it will cost to maimtain. Tom Ashbrook is more comprehensive than most as he can devote a full hour to a single topic, but he’s dropping the ball on this one, as is the rest of the media. This bailout is blackmail the democratic congress can’t refuse and serves mainly to feed the rich and keep Bush’s legacy from becoming even more of a fiasco. Let these banks fail and things WILL become desperate worldwide, but then we’ll see the real revolutionary changes this country so deeply needs!

John said: “Let these banks fail and things WILL become desperate worldwide, but then we’ll see the real revolutionary changes this country so deeply needs!”
Well this sure sounds familiar. Latin American revolutionaries said this for several decades: let it all fall and then we can create a truly just society.
Only two things wrong with this: first, if the banks fall what will be created in their wake will only be slightly better. And, what about all the ordinary people John and others with the same views want to save? How much will they suffer?
Maybe sometimes we all want “revolutionary change” but history shows that only very, very, very rarely does such change actually take place. And costs to really living human beings are always enormous.

The McCain/Palin ticket will maybe win this election.
Why? Because of the promise of tax breaks.
The Obama/Bidden ticket will not be able to explain the need to raise taxes and the American people will believe the BS McCain and Palin spew out every day.

After McCain/Palin take office and are faced with an the majority rule of a Democratic Congress things will start to get interesting.

I can’t wait to see McCain within months of taking office rescind his whole economic package and announce that he will be raising taxes across the board.
this will create a huge split between McCain and Palin and in turn she will attempt to start running for the presidency while trying to be VP and a super mom.

Tempers will flare as Palin after insists on the moose burger becoming the official meat of the White House.
This will be the beginning of a the great divide of between McCain and Palin and the lines will be drawn.

Other issues will be Palin will mistake the Spanish prime minister for Putin and start a international incident by insisting that he pull his troops out of Atlanta.

I also predict that within the first two years of their administration Palin will be impeached for sending mass e-mails to everyone in the country, thus crashing every server in the US causing another hue melt down on wall street. She will be accused of wire fraud.

Let these banks fail and things WILL become desperate worldwide, but then we’ll see the real revolutionary changes this country so deeply needs!

So you want millions of people to suffer and become desperate enough to revolt and put into power some demagogue who promises to “fix” things? This is how Lenin and Hitler, and various Latin American dictators came to power.

The correct solution is to learn our lesson; reform the system so banks and other financial institutions are not allowed to play recklessley with the money entrusted to them and are not allowed to misrepresent the degree of risk inherent in a financial instrument, either to other institutions or ordinary investors. Limits on the amount of leverag and increases in transparency are due. And all this can be backed up with making the officers of these institutions personally responsible using methods similar to the SOX rules written for accounting after Enron.

The other good thing about this whole mess is that it’s a perfect repudiation of the GOP’s mantra of small government. George Bush, erstwhile Republican conservative, will be remembered not only for all the other debacles of his term, but also as the President who presided over huge nationalizations of private companies that make Hugo Chavez look like the President of the Chamber of Commerce.

“Revoulutionary changes,” my actual words, does not mean revolution. The truly progressive political changes under FDR saw to the greatest equalization of wealth in our country’s history and subsequently to a half century of this country’s most successful growth. Republicans have spent the last 30 years dismantling FDR’s New Deal revolution, and now look at the result. Republican policy and cronies have now thoroughly permeated our government, and a new progressive era of revolutionary change is what is needed. The democratic congress knows it has to go along with this bailout plan because, despite 30 years of republican stupidity ensuring failure of the whole system, democrats know if they refuse the bailout they’ll be pegged for the blame. This is the same sort of fear democrats succumbed to when blackmailed into going along with the Iraq invasion, the Patriot Act, etc..

Thus, the only way America can get the “revoultionary change” it needs for the long-term health of the economy and its people is to let these failures happen.

DON’T BE STUPID TOO!. Things are going to get bad and the people will suffer eithwer way. Bush’s bailout plan only postpones the inevitable until he’s out of office and can’t be pegged for all the blame. The massive debt will mean longterm suffering for American’s anyway, as will the fact that the bailout solution will allow the system to slide by without getting the massive changes in oversight that are really needed.

Again, let the system fail, let real changes take place, and we’ll all be better off in the long term.

Free markets are supposed to be self correcting, and SO IS DEMOCRACY. When leadership utterly fails the people, our system is designed to spur revolutionary change. The bailout only ensures that neither Democracy or the free market system are allowed to work the way they are supposed to.

If you want to be foolish and bail out the wealthy only to suffer anyway in the longterm, then you deserve that curse. Otherwise, let both systems work and maybe we’ll get over this hump within our lifetimes… at the very least, our children will be better off for our having made the right choice instead of the easy, stupid choice.

I want to thank the gentleman from yesterday who linked the “Global Pool of Money” program on This American Life available on thislife.org. It was fascinating and disturbing.

“The Long Demise of the Glass-Steagall Act” is informative reading at this link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html.

I would also suggest Terry Gross/Fresh Air’s interviews this week and one earlier this year with Michael Greenberger found on npr.org. You can listen to both Greenbeger interviews at this link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94686428

While both Republicans and Democrats in congress helped pass the deregulation, the republicans are espouse it as a philosophy. So each voter has to ask themselves who they trust to regulate the markets properly.

It seems a sham to me to claim that there were too few regulators from what I’ve been hearing said lately. From what I’m learning the de-regulation is what allowed… institutions to get too big to fail, the Enron debacle, the sub-prime crisis.
The deregulation passed in 2000 expressly prohibited the Fed and States to regulates the “default credit swaps”, the instruments where those really bad loans were sliced and diced and sold as AAA credit ratings to investors.

The financial problems of the last few years appear to have been preventable had the de-regulation in 1999, and 2000 not occurred.

Joanna,
Latin American revolutionaries, as you broadly put it, may by and large have succeeded I believe, if not for U.S. intervention. Take Cuba, for instance, which after its revolution still managed to produce one seventh of the world’s sugar. Thanks to the U.S. the Soviet Union was their only significant cutomer, so after decline of the USSR, Cuba utterly tanked. If we had not boycotted Cuba due to differences in ideology and the fact that they embarrassed the US politically and militarily, think what they might have become. Beautiful tourist locations, terrific crop lands, maritime industries, etc.

The U.S. has ensured that Latin American democracies fail by corrupting their governments and their wealthy enough to steal their resources and allow mega corporations to steal their land for agricultural use.

Some of Latin America is finally figuring out how to rid itself of U.S. and IMF interference, and now Latin America is considered one of the most probable success stories for this new century. Too bad they couldn’t rid themselves of U.S. influence fifty years ago… now we’ll never know just how well some Latin American revolutions might have worked out.

“Let’s be clear the democratic Clinton’s administrations repeal of the Glass Steagall Act followed by the Republican administrations relaxation of CFTC oversight of derivatives (passed pre-Christmas congressional break December 15, 2000 under the direction of McCain’s former economic advisor guru Phil Graham) clearly place culpability in the lap of both parties and finger pointing at one another will achieve nothing.”

Ran,

I’ve heard this argument and I just don’t get the Glass Steagall part. How did letting investment banks, commercial banks, and insurance companies compete with each other lead to this problem?

And BTW, Earnest Hollings was the only Democrat that voted for repealing Glass-Steagal, and NO Republicans voted against it. Yes, a Democratic president signed it, but the two parties are hardly equally culpable.

“The correct solution is to learn our lesson; reform the system so banks and other financial institutions are not allowed to play recklessley with the money entrusted to them and are not allowed to misrepresent the degree of risk inherent in a financial instrument”

Gee Peter, so you think that financial institutions “misrepresent(ed) the degree of risk inherent in a financial instrument.”

So I wonder, do you think that if they misrepresented risk, that they are partially to blame for this mess?

“And all this can be backed up with making the officers of these institutions personally responsible using methods similar to the SOX rules written for accounting after Enron.”

This was one big ruse and has had absolutely zero effect on corporate governance.

Steven Pearlstein was absolutely right when he said, “This is a confidence game.”

Obama’s yelling? Really? The guy is sober and calm as Mt. Rushmore. The guy’s cool as a cucumber.

I think that’s something we need. Calm, reason, the ability to think and ask questions.

Heck, I’ll go ahead and say it: we need a more NPRish sort of president.

fiat money based on air inflating at a rateof 13 to 20 percent annually and people wonder why we have a problem?
people keep asking what the root cause of our economic problems are and i say the federal reserve itself is the problem. the fed is the one that is creating money out of thin air.

we need a more NPRish sort of president.

Maybe Tom would consider running for something (maybe governor of NH in 2010?). I’d vote for him.

“Latin American revolutionaries, as you broadly put it, may by and large have succeeded I believe, if not for U.S. intervention. Take Cuba, for instance, which after its revolution still managed to produce one seventh of the world’s sugar.”

It would probably produce far MORE sugar if it allowed free enterprise and private ownership of land. Anyway Cuba is a failure simply by being a single-party dictatorship with no freedom. Can you imagine having a discussion forum like this under their government?

Peter - that does not change the fact that the US contributed into Cuba being what it is today. Seeing what CIA had done in Guatemala in ‘54, Castro and Che Guevara decided that it was best for them to close their society to American businesses and diplomats than risk the same fate. It is undeniable that the US government and businesses wreaked havoc all over Central and South America.

Tom,

You seemed truly sobered on learning what’s ahead of us… Change is happening,…. We’re finding out too late. It’s time to play catch up.

Maybe now you also will know what I and others were talking about, who saw this coming from a long way off, and have been yelling about it in a crescendo this past year. There are reasons you have felt like our society is flying blind, and some like me who speak as if we are not. I’m definitely not. I have the best modern physics and a lifetime of studying the problem.

The problem? You can also read the other letters I’ve sent, or browse my site. It’s that our inherited idea of cause and effect is for a deterministic world. It was put there by a few hundred years of science focusing on deterministic problems. Nature is full of systems that behave more like organisms, having learning processes and reactions of their own. These systems are individualistic, and full of individual eruptions of things, not deterministic. I happen to have spent a lifetime developing an effective method for learning about their design and behavior. If I can’t predict exactly, I at least can be the first to see where they’re headed. I’ve learned to read them, and can show you convincingly. That’s not at all what other kinds of science offer. It’s better.

I respect your need to listen to familiar voices, but you owe it to your planet to listen to some fresh ones too, and not look for making your judgments either. On this one look at every discord for new open questions. Learning about something quite new is the only way.

Phil

All this with the current debt meltdown was foretold in Larry Berket’s book “The Coming Economic Earthquake” that was published in the late 1980’s. During the last great depression the government protected the integrity of the currency. This created much more pain and panic on the street. Larry foretells in his book that this time the Government would seek to, or be forced to, “monetize” the debt. This is exactly what the Fed is now doing. The government will be swamped with absorbing all the huge amounts of Wall Street, debt and worthless bonds. Taxes will be low in a depressed economy. Eventually the world will loose faith and US government bonds and huge government deficits. So the government will be forced to just print more money to cover everything. And in the end the pain will be greater and longer because we will not avert the depression that is coming, and the US dollar will not be worth the paper it is printed on. At least in the last great depression we had a stable good currency to help pull us out. This book also very accurately charts the growth in Government debt that I have been following and charting since the late 1980’s. As Larry predicted, in his book, way back in the late1980’s, the line of growth in Government debt is now completely vertical.

Government intervention is just going to drag out and prolong the problem, and in the end, just make it worse, as we just seek another opportunity to avoid facing reality. The government should just protect the currency and get the pain and panic over with quickly. What we need is a stiff dose of reality, and not more creeping Poly Anna-ism.

Thanks, Phil. But wait…I’m receiving a transmission….wait…it’s from Earth:

Great show, Tom. I know that it was important to cover the economic news this week — it couldn’t really have been given less time, and I appreciate the shows this week that featured experts on the economy…

I do wish a little more time could’ve been spent on D F Wallace. Perhaps next week?

I’m fascinated by how these events are influencing the election. When actual issues force their way onto newscasts and front pages, the Democrats benefit. When the Republicans, and their coalition of the willing in media, can distract with moose, lipstick, and J. Wright, McCain surges.

The circumstances of the S&L crisis and what we are going through are very similar and even some of the players are the same. The players include Alan Greenspan, the Bush family, and John McCain.

THE CIRCUMSTANCES
In the early 1980s conservative control of government under the Regan Administration led to deregulation of the S&Ls.

Deregulation of the S&Ls led to heavy speculation.

Investment money flooded the real estate market which caused the overbuilding of the multi-family residential and commercial markets.

Public accounting firms, security analysts, and the financial community did not effectively police the S&Ls (nor themselves).

The emphasis upon deregulation and smaller, cheaper government left “Federal and state examination and supervisory staffs insufficient in number, experience, or ability” according to the United States League of Savings Institutions.

The real estate boom eventually collapsed leading many builders to declare bankruptcy. These bankruptcies, in turn, led to the insolvency of many S&Ls.

THE PLAYERS
Charles Keating, the leader of Lincoln S&L, conservative, and past appointee of President Nixon was at the center of this controversy. Mr. Keating, later convicted of fraud and racketeering, had five senators meet with regulators to block investigations against him.

The Senators were called the “Keating Five” at the time. John McCain was one of the “Keating Five”. McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions Mrs. McCain invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.

Keating also hired a young libertarian conservative Economist who in 1985 tried to convince the S&L oversight agency to exempt Lincoln Savings from certain regulations. Greenspan wrote a favorable report on Lincoln Savings saying that is was “a financially strong institution that presents no foreseeable risk to depositors or the government.” (Greenspan produced similar favorable reports on numerous other banks that also failed soon after.)

One year later, in 1986, President Regan appointed Greenspan as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Another of the three most notorious S&L failures was that of Silverado Savings and Loan. The federal government covered $1.3 billion of Silverado’s. Silverado S&L collapsed in 1988. It’s director at the time was Neil Bush brother of George W. Bush.
The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado’s failure and determined that Neil Bush had given himself loans and had engaged in numerous “breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest.” He was later successfully sued for his failures.
My source for this information was mostly Wikipedia. My searches were “savings and loan crisis”, “Charles Keating”, “Keating Five”, and “Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act”.

There’s clearly a theme in play right now - something that links the behaviours of recent US decisions. That theme is a sense of reactive rescue rather than considered response. The US - and international governments - are all spending less time positioning for the future… more passion reacting to the mistakes and misadventures of the recent past. Call it ‘panic’, but don’t called it misplaced fear.

The biggest challenge will be for the next President to focus forward while mopping up the failures of past strategies (or the absence thereof).

The biggest question will be if there’s even time enough for such strategic planning. At least for now… there’s clearly the energy to repair, then reset.

“The emphasis upon deregulation and smaller, cheaper government left “Federal and state examination and supervisory staffs insufficient in number, experience, or ability” according to the United States League of Savings Institutions.”

Interestingly enough the government has not become either smaller or cheaper. It has become more incompetenet and more willing to throw money around. Not even bidding is necessary anymore to receive billions in fed. contracts.

Don’t know if anyone is still reading this chain but… John, you are right that in some countries, Latin American revolutionaries might have come to power if it weren’t for US interference. But doing politics means taking into consideration world politics and what your actual chances to affect change really are. And if you are a “revolutionary,” I believe that you have to take into consideration that if you want to help people, you cannot imperiously let them die while you enjoy being a revolutionary. If you spend time in Latin America, you will find that progressive people no longer are willing to accept the level of deaths that they were willing to 20 to 40 years ago, i.e. not even that 19th century throwback Chavez or the much more sincere Evo Morales. Finally, I think it would be beyond wonderful if Latin America were on the verge of being a great success story. Unfortunately, if you spend time there, you will discover that there are very deep problems that no one has yet figured out how to solve… All in all my point was that when you join others to take on the responsibility to act in a drastic manner to bring about change you must understand that you also take on the responsibility for the individual suffering you may cause along the way. And it’s a very serious responsibility.

Indeed I know some of Latin America well… I am myself latin american (my mother was mexican), I speak spanish fluently and am well travelled, but perhaps most to the point I grew up in a very politically active family. My mother was a founder of a now defunct 1970’s group called LAPAG (Latin American Political Action Group), and I grew up among many members of the Vinceremos Brigade (Cuba Activist Group). Our house was a waystation with activists from all over Latin America staying with us constantly. I have a long history of sensitivity for Latin American issues.

The important point I want to make, however, is that populist revolutions might never have had the level of suffering that accompanied them had it not been for U.S. involvement/interference. Revolutionaries of the last century were not, as a matter of course, “imperious,” as you suggest. Commoners may have fared well after many Latin revolutions had the U.S. not inserted itself to ensure ensuing chaos, rather than let the revolutions take a natural populist course and see what happens. No one can now ever tell if any of these originally optimistic popular revolutions might have succeeded, perhaps even without significant suffering.

You ignore the fact that foreign induced corruption in Latin America (not always by the U.S.) is the historical source of most of the suffering of the poor. These countries are typically rich in resource wealth and have famously industrious work ethics. Corruption ensures the neglect of necessary infrastructure to succeed as a nation. This infrastructure is what might have been accomplished if not for Foriegn interest imposing themselves.

People all over the world have WILLINGLY given their lives and suffered in a hope that the future would be better for their brethren and children. The sacrifice of many “revolutionaries” (not a bad word) might have proven highly altruistic if the failure of their cause had not been ensured by greedy outsiders pursuing other agendas.

I know Latin America today has tired of violence and corruption, but blaming revolutionaries for this misses important historical context. We will just never know what kind of societies might have been built, but we do know that some societies which effectively resisted foriegn influence after their revolutions succeeded well (the U.S. for instance).

Oops! A common problem among those of us who became fluent speaking spanish in the home, but have no formal education in the language, is misspelling. Add to that the confusion of cognates in other languages you HAVE studied formally (I have college minors in French and Italian), and the problem grows significantly. I realized on rereading my message that I meant to spell Venceremos Brigade. The italian word vincere (from the most recent language I studied) confused my spelling of the spanish word vencer. I just didn’t want the misspelling to lead you to think I was full of it when I mentioned that I speak spanish fluently. Anyway…

The federal government has promised more than a half a trillion dollars for bail-outs this week.

We could’ve afforded another Iraq War with that money.

I have seen more final estimates in the range of a trillion dollars.

Of course once the government is respnsible for handling these millions of homes, they will have to be appraised, maintained (many even repaired after vandalism and stripping), sold, accounted, etc… So add to the expense a huge bureaucracy to do all of this. Also, tack on the interest for the borrowing of a trillion dollars. You get the idea that every single tax payer in the country is in this mess for at least between 5,000 to 7,000 dollars per person. Meanwhile, the government still needs its regular revenues to operate.

The wealthy will do quite nicely from the bailout though, while the rest suffer the consequences.

Kind of makes you sick to the stomach, doesn’t it?

All of this goes to show how short-sighted and foolish liberals (and everyone else) were when they opposed plans by Bush and McCain to privatize Social Security.

Maybe now people will agree it’s time to sink everyone’s retirement security into investments on Wall Street. I mean, who do you trust, the Federal Government, whose doing all of these “bail-outs” now, or Wall Street, that is smart enough to sit back and receive all those “bail-outs.”

“All of this goes to show how short-sighted and foolish liberals (and everyone else) were when they opposed plans by Bush and McCain to privatize Social Security.”

You’re being sarcastic, right? I mean no one can be so idiotic to believe that this crisis supports the privitazation of Social Security.

Michael his moniker is Groucho I don’t think this rube us ever serious.

Michael his moniker is Groucho I don’t think this rube is ever serious.

sorry I hit the wrong key…

I once shot a moose in my pajamas…..

What he was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know.

Groucho, are you sure it wasn’t an elephant you shot?

Actually, these days I suppose that depends on whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.

Why isn’t John McCain’s involvement with the Savings and Loan influence, regulation and failures getting more exposure and traction?

Why isn’t it destroying his polling numbers and support from swing voters?

How is it that being one of “The Keating Five” is no big deal?

It even puts a negative light to his self promotion as working “across the isle”.

Please help me to understand.

Why isn’t John McCain’s involvement with the Savings and Loan influence, regulation and failures getting more exposure and traction?

If you find out the answer to any of your questions please let us know!

Given McCain’s support for deregulation, his advocacy of privatizing social security and his close connections with the other Republican philosophies that led up to this, I’m amazed he’s held up as well as he has in the polls.

He is slipping a little - I follow the Iowa Electronic Markets as the most reliable election poll on the planet and McCain has lost whatever ground he gained after the RNC convention, but I’m surprised he hasn’t plummetted.

I hope we get commentary and news that starts to put the current equity stake and interest obligated bailouts in better historical perspective. I bet (hope) it would be comforting to see the picture when adjusted for inflation and GDP. What is the track records of other bailouts, were they paid back?