The bail-out bill

Someone to watch over me

The bail-out law brings more oversight of the Fed and the financial system

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Readers' comments



In your October 11th-17 issue you did not mention any of the "pork barrel" additions to the "Bail Out Bill". With all the rehtoric for "change" from both candidates for president, I would have expected John to have voted nay for the bill. But, I hope it's not evident but it smells like "Politics as Usual". Respectfully and Sincerely KeokeSS.

g. Anton

An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth Much More Than a Pound of CureA year or so ago I predicted the present economic situation, and my prediction of the timing and of the severity were perfect. My prediction wasn't based on technical acumen, as I don't have any. But I am a big believer in KARMA, and Bush's karma was and is perfectly bad. (Why is his karma bad?--because the man is a moral and spiritual derelict). He was always talking about how good the economy was, and a little later (when thhe economy was obviously less than "good"), how the foundations of the economy were very sound, So obviously I predicted that the catastrophe would hit at the worst possible time for Bush, i.e. right before the US presidential elections. And here we are. For the same reason (Bush's bad karma), I now predict that the efforts of the fearless three (George Bush, Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke) to resurrect the US and world economy will be a dismal failure and do much more harm than good.So what about the fearless three-some, Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke? Can you trust them? As stated above, for some time now, I've been hearing from them phrases like: "the economy is good", the foundations of the economy are basically sound", etc., etc.. As an example, let's look at fearless Ben's track recordAbout six months ago, Bernanke told the congress, "The Fed stands ready to take additional actions as needed to provide liquidity and promote the orderly functioning of the markets". What "liquidity" and what "orderly funtioning of of the markets"?In October of 2005, Ben Bernanke that told the congress that they didn't have to worry about the housing bubble busting because the increases in housing prices was based on "very strong economic fundamentals".Now, all of a sudden, all three of the fearless ones are shouting "Surprise! Surprise! We are in a tremendous financial crisis, and if you don't give us $700 billion immediately, THE WORLD WILL END!"None of the recent fearless three US economic actions has done any good, and their farcical "THE WORLD WILL END" scenario certainly contributed to recent record plunges of world and US stock markets. To me, it is very obvious that their magic "cure" of our economic ills is no more than whistling in the dark. What is Paulson going to do with $700 plua billion? The mortgage-backed debt of Freddie and Fannie alone is 5.3 TRILLION dollars, and of the overall US market, it is 11 TRILLION dollars! Enough said? And before this is all over, real estate values in many areas of US will fall to between 30 to 50% from their recent highs. As an afterthought, while spending $700 billion plus the cost of other recent Fed and Treasury actions is probably irrelevant to the mortgage mess rectification, this spending will cause serere inflation, it will damage the dollar, and it might even cause a crash of the dollar. Also, all this might cause short term cosmetic improvement and good feelings on Wall Street; but it's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop.



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