Ok, it's a cutesy slogan, but maybe true. The current bailout bill, as I understand it, is the same thing as before, except they've added another 150 billion in tax cuts, so it will really cost 850 billion. It's worse than before. The oversight provisions are still minimal, meaning that one man is going to have the purse strings that, constitutionally, are supposed to be controlled by Congress. I imagine he's got a lot of new best friends right now.
This problem is complicated, but the suggestions that seem to make sense to me are: 1) Temporary moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. 2) Take over the banks that have failed, just like the FDIC does. (A new Resolution Trust Corporation) 3) Renegotiate loans that are "toxic" into fixed rate loans with payments that can be managed by the homeowners. There should be provisions for raising the rate as the home owner's situation improves. (Although it should by a percentage of the increase. We don't want to eliminate the motivation for getting raises or getting a better job.) This means that some banks will lose money. But at least it means there will still be SOME money coming in, instead of them having a house that can't be sold, which would force the housing market even lower. 4) Re-establish regulation that would keep this from ever happening again. This moronic idea that loosening regulation would somehow help is the kind of backwards thinking that got us into this mess. 5) Go after the criminals, the people who sold mortgages fraudulently, and seize their assets. (Not sure how much that will gain, since they probably invested in the same stuff they were selling.) There's a lot more to be figured out by people with a lot more knowledge than I in these matters. These ideas are not my own, but gleaned from what I've read and heard over the past couple weeks. There are some very smart people saying this is what we should be doing. Unfortunately, none of them hold public office. Please contact your elected officials and tell them that simply tweaking that bill isn't enough, that you don't want your kids on the hook for the greed and irresponsible behavior of Wall Street. Remind them who can vote them out of office and who they are supposed to be working for. NPR had a great interview on how this happened : http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355 For once, we need responsible action, not the same old partisan nonsense. Ray ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Freemind-developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freemind-developer
