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View Full Version : Bailout for Wall Street? Letter to U.S.Senator and Representative!


JoeCorrado
09-20-08, 11:41 AM
Copy of a letter that I sent to my senator and representative today.

Feel free to copy and paste if you feel the same and send it along to YOUR representatives in congress. Find them here. (https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml)

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RE: Bailout of Wall Street

Please do not rush into this historic bailout proposal too quickly. Too many times in the past have poorly thought out and rushed into decisions come back to haunt us. This "emergency request" by the Bush Administration strikes me as odd at the very least- frankly it STINKS.

Why should we, the tax payers suddenly rush in to save the fat cats of Wall Street now when these same institutions have done nothing to warrant such relief? They make bad loans, bad investments, bad decisions all with the almighty dollar being their guiding light. They have shown not an ounce of real care or concern for the American People- instead profits and bonuses have been their only goal with no thought of how their actions might help- or hurt the nation and the PEOPLE in the larger sense. Corporate greed, not corporate responsibility has defined trickle down economics.

Now we are expected to pay for being taken to the cleaners by them and are being asked to jump into line to be abused again by paying for their irrsponsible greed a second time around??

The average American is told that we must make responsible decisions or suffer the consequences- forclosures at a record rate, unemployment up, wages down, health care costs up, education system a joke... oh yes, pay we have! Yet Wall Street apparently gets to play their games of greed and abuse with no restraint- to gamble and when they "win" to pocket the profits. NOT a very good scenario for the American Taxpayer and one that even worse seems to reward corporate greed and bad behavior.

If a "bail out" is required then I recommend that the ROOT CAUSE of the emergency be addressed and not just the symptom. The root cause in this case has been the deregulation of Wall Street- Republicans have pushed this "free market, global economy" lie for years as being the cure for America- as our ticket to a better day tomorrow than we have had in the past. We now see, it has instead been the death of a thousand cuts for our economy and our way of life. The American dream has been exported along with our jobs!

Trickle down economics was the primer that encouraged the relaxation or removal of any restraints- the policies impleimented in pursuing deregulation allowed "corporate greed" to run rampant. It enabled Wall Street's bad decision making based solely upon greed to find traction and to run amok. We now arrive at the end of the road for this failed economic policy. The proof is in the pudding and the results cannot be argued.

Trickle down economics has "in effect" been an eight year long assault upon the middle class of America who have always made this country work best. The assault represents the largest transfer of wealth in our history if the truth is to be stated properly- The rich got richer, the poor got poorer and NOTHING trickled down to us save the greedy tentacles of corporate America as it sought to take ever more from the people.

You cannot continue to pressure the middle class by deflating our wages, shipping our jobs over seas and the continuous chipping away at the foundations upon which the middle class stands- education, health care, job security and the ability to organize for our own benefit.

Trickle down economics has failed in every way imaginable for the middle class and the working poor of our nation. SHAME!

The American People must be assisted before any real recovery from this situation can be sustained and that help does not come in soley the form of the biggest bailout in American history for the huge corporations on Wall Street. It must come in the form of real and tangible help for Main Street at the same time. THE SCALES MUST BE BALANCED.

Think long and hard before you sign away hundreds of billions of dollars for a pig in the poke proposal that carries NO GUARANTEES of ANY specific remedies for Main Street. This is not the time for hurried deisions based upon the fear being porpagated by the same administration that brought us Iraq. We don't need legislation based upon fear- we need legislation that works for the PEOPLE.

Do not buy something when you do not even know what you are buying. Do not leave the revolving door of government bailouts open for TWO YEARS or longer. IF a bank has bad debt and we are to assume responsibility for that debt then KNOW what we are buying first- not after the fact. Standards must be defined and limits as well for just what it is EXACTLY we are buying.

I cannot tell you how angry this makes me. I have struggled under "trickle down economics" for too long. It is a FAILED POLICY that IS the true ROOT CAUSE of this disaster. You don't grow an economy from the top down- you grow it from the bottom up. So please, do get busy in finding a solution but find a solution that works for us the people first.

ENOUGH of this fiasco, it is time for a change.

Regards,

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SimNut
09-20-08, 12:04 PM
Why should we, the tax payers suddenly rush in to save the fat cats of Wall Street now when these same institutions have done nothing to warrant such relief?

Because if they don't the US finance system will collapse and put the country into a depressions, which in turn will adversley affect the global economy.

Besides, what's another trillion dollars of worthless credit? This way instead of the US being a debtor nation on its own, it can convert the entire global economy into a debtor world.

Frame57
09-20-08, 12:14 PM
Lots of good stuff in that letter Joe. :up:

Tchocky
09-20-08, 05:11 PM
I guess that ensuring the survival of certain financial institutions is necessary to for economic stability. As a basic action, a bailout can save on pain. Whether or not a government can do it properly is a different matter.
Remember that bailout money isn't just flushed down the Wall Street toilet, the US gov't got an 80% equity stake in AIG as part of the rescue deal. They're buying something.

SUBMAN1
09-20-08, 07:45 PM
Yeah, they are buying something with assets at least. They will get their money back out for sure, just that it needs to be sold after that.

-S

JoeCorrado
09-20-08, 08:01 PM
I guess that ensuring the survival of certain financial institutions is necessary to for economic stability. As a basic action, a bailout can save on pain. Whether or not a government can do it properly is a different matter.
Remember that bailout money isn't just flushed down the Wall Street toilet, the US gov't got an 80% equity stake in AIG as part of the rescue deal. They're buying something.
Problem is- they just don't what yet.

Guess we will find out eventually but when the general consensus is that "the banks can't sell it to anybody, for anything" I have serious doubts that when we open the bag and look inside- we will pleased to finally understand the reasons.

Amazing that the government could not do anything to intervene BEFORE people were left in the streets because it would have been a budget wrecker. But, now it has become a problem for the banks who made the loans in the first place suddenly the budget doesn't matter- just the bail out.

If the banks had been willing to work with people to keep the interest rates down for people who had been making the payments at the original rate- instead of insisting that the borrowers had signed the agreement and we shouldn't feel sorry for them when the rates go up... much of this "bad PAPER" is due to the banks own short-sighted greed. More is from their immoral efforts to trick the least of us into believing that they could be a part of the American Dream and luring them into loans they could not afford while the banks felt certain that it wouldn't matter to them (the banks) because the property would only increase in value and no matter what happened to the little guy that they (the banks) would profit regardless.

The story is deeper than first blush- the path to this place has more twists and turns than the 3 page proposal that the administration has suggested would lead us to believe. The bigger the rush the more suspicious I am.

Every one of us knows why you never buy a pig in the poke and that is what we are being asked to do... but we better hurry! No time for careful evaluation, no time for a closer look! Just sign right here!!

Yeah- we were all born yesterday. This is Bushes last great gift to corporate America. Merry Christmas all, and to all a good night. We will have time to worry about the real issues tomorrow, but we won't have the money to be bold then, will we? Nope, and the reason is that Bush is hijacking our future and limiting our options- locking us in as it were, right this very minute.

I hope that our lawmakers have plenty of coffee to keep them wide eyed and alert as this one is debated, because we sure have not been able to trust this administration on anything. Not from foreign policy, not on domestic policy and absolutely NEVER when they swore they had the answers or the interest of the middle class in mind.

Blacklight
09-20-08, 11:22 PM
Agreed. This administration has succeded in pretty much sending the middle and poor classes right into the tank while the wealthy have prosphered and achieved reccord earnings. :nope:
This George W. Bush administration in my book is the absolute WORST administration EVER set up in Washington. It's wreaking things worse than his father's administration (that tanked the economy but nowhere near his son's level).
Have you noticed that the middle class always seems to go into a resession whenever we get a Republican administration in Washinton ?
At the rate we're going, we're going to end up as a third world country controlled by a bunch of rich elite who keep getting richer while the poor and middle class are waiting in soup lines at the shelters.