ChristopherChandler.net

Is there anything that Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Duey, and Louie CAN’T teach us? So smart. I know why this is now one of my favorite cartoons of all time. -C

Now, I just don’t get this. This has been in the news all weekend, and still all week. Basically the way I understand it, is the Bush Administration wants to rush in a bill that allows major financial institutions to be injected with taxpayer dollars due to failed mortgages. $700 Billion to be exact. Where I get angry is the statements made by the Bush Administration, clearly stating that no changes be made to the bill, and all actions are not supervised by Congress once this bill takes effect.

Stop right there.

You are telling me you want to take $700 BILLION dollars, approximately $2000 from every man, woman, and child here in the United States (Yes, do the math) and just “let this one slide”.  I don’t think so! This kind of thing needs to be monitored, even IF we allowed it to pass, to make sure that the funds are being used responsibly.

Okay, well maybe we can add some things to make the bill justifyible for the common middle-class worker! Democrats in congress responded that it would like to help the American people by providing them with some relief to those who had been hit hard financially because of these sub-prime mortgages.  However, Bush wants nothing of that as he made in a statement yesterday:

“Obviously, there will be differences over some details, and we will have to work through them. That is an understandable part of the policy making process. But it would not be understandable if Members of Congress sought to use this emergency legislation to pass unrelated provisions, or to insist on provisions that would undermine the effectiveness of the plan.”

So basically they are saying, “Please pass this bill, but don’t you DARE make any changes, because you will be labelled un-American if you do.” But wait, there is more!  Check out this paragraph (now famously known as Section Eight) in this bailout plan:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Wait what? Not only can Congress NOT have any part in monitoring this, no matter what happens, no matter how those funds are used, no judge, no jury can EVER hold those people making these decisions responsible if they decide to do something that may even be unlawful.

The real kick in the pants:

All CEOs of these major financial institutions, that have made poor decisions by giving ridiculous loans to homeowners (that they never could afford in the first place) are still going to be rewarded according to this bill, and the Bush administration. Not only that, but check out the bonuses that were given out last year by these firms, even though we knew that there was issues with the mortgage industry:

 

“In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms — Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.

That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.  

Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines — their worst year since 2002.”

What the heck is going on?  Do we really need to keep funding bad decisions with no repercussions?  I don’t understand how the administration could think they can pass this bill with no incentives for the common middle class worker, and get away with it?  The only logic I have is that since is was brought to the table on a Saturday, they were hoping Congress would mull over it on the weekend, come in Monday and vote almost blindly, because of the “urgency”.  Fine, yes we need to do something about it, but we don’t need to reward CEO’s who make terrible decisions, nor do we need to watch this money go down the drain in unregulated investments.  We really need to keep people in check, and make sure that the ones controlling our money are making good decisions with it.  Having CEOs being bailed out, and not the people affected the most by these investment failures is just plain wrong. -C