A Bottom-Up Bailout Rather Than Trickle-Down http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/11/bottom-up-bailout-rather-than-trickle.html
Hank Paulson has just about burned through $300 billion, and it's not clear what the public has got out of it. Perhaps things would be worse without the bailout but they're certainly no better. Wall Street banks have not significantly stepped up their loans to small businesses, college students, car buyers, or distressed homeowners. Much of the auto industry is on the verge of bankruptcy. And the rate of foreclosures is rising. What happened to all the money? About a third has gone into dividends the banks are paying their shareholders. Some of the rest into executive salaries and bonuses. Another portion toward acquisitions designed to raise share values. Another chunk for bailing out giant insurer, AIG. That's not what taxpayers bargained for. Paulson originally told Congress he'd use the money to buy mortgage-backed securities that were clogging the financial system. He'd create a market for them by holding a kind of reverse auction, buying them from the banks at the lowest prices they'd be willing to sell them for. But Paulson has abandoned that strategy and is now just handing the money directly to the big banks, and AIG -- all of which are using the money for their own purposes. It's the worst type of trickle-down economics. Taxpayers are sending the money upward, and almost none of it is trickling back down. The lame-duck Congress should amend the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program to prohibit banks that are receiving the money from paying dividends, executive bonuses or deferred compensation, or doing acquisitions. And Congress should save the rest of the $700 billion program for a new administration that will put it to better uses. For example, as FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has suggested, use the money to guarantee payment of mortgages whose terms are eased by lenders. Use it also to restructure automobile companies whose creditors, executives, shareholders, and workers agree to put up money as well. Use it to guarantee loans made to credit-worthy small businesses, college students, car buyers, and others who at this moment cannot get credit -- and who therefore cannot keep this economy moving forward. In other words, use it for a bottom-up bailout, rather than trickle down. Peace and best wishes. Xi On Dec 4, 3:04 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My comments: I do not want to emphasize my differences with his > approach basically because they are minor compared with the whole > approach, that I agree, of course. > > http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/11/rebirth-of-keynes-and-debate-... > > The economy has just about come to a standstill – not so much because > credit markets are clogged as because there’s not enough demand in the > economy to keep it going. Consumer spending has fallen off a cliff. > Investment is drying up. And exports are dropping because the > recession has now spread around the world. > > So are we about to return to Keynesianism? Hopefully. Government is > the spender of last resort, which means the new Obama administration > should probably be considering a stimulus package in the range of $600 > billion, roughly 4 percent of national product -- focused on building > and repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, providing help to > states to maintain services, and investing in new green technologies > in order to wean the nation off oil. > > But between now and late January, when the stimulus package will be > voted on, we're likely to be treated to a great debate over the wisdom > of Keynesianism. Fiscal hawks will claim government is already > spending way too much. Even without the stimulus package, next year's > budget deficit is likely to be in the range of $1.5 trillion, > considering the shrinking economy and what’s being spent bailing out > Wall Street. The hawks also worry that post-war baby boomers are only > a few years away from retirement, meaning that the costs of Social > Security and Medicare will balloon. > > What the hawks don’t get is what John Maynard Keynes understood: when > the economy has as much underutilized capacity as we have now, and are > likely to have more of in 2009 and 2010 (in all likelihood, over 8 > percent of our workforce unemployed, 13 percent underemployed, > millions of houses empty, factories idled, and office space unused), > government spending that pushes the economy to fuller capacity will of > itself shrink future deficits. > > Conservative supply-siders, meanwhile, will call for income-tax cuts > rather than government spending, claiming that people with more money > in their pockets will get the economy moving again more readily than > can government. They're wrong, too. Income-tax cuts go mainly to upper- > income people, and they tend to save rather than spend. > > Even if a rebate could be fashioned for the middle class, it wouldn't > do much good because, as we saw from the last set of rebate checks, > people tend to use extra cash to pay off debts rather than buy goods > and services. Besides, individual purchases wouldn't generate nearly > as many American jobs as government spending on infrastructure, social > services, and green technologies, because so much of we as individuals > buy comes from abroad. > > So the government has to spend big time. The real challenge will be > for government to spend it wisely -- avoiding special-interest > pleadings and pork projects such as bridges to nowhere. We’ll need a > true capital budget that lays out the nation’s priorities rather than > the priorities of powerful Washington lobbies. How exactly to achieve > this? That's the debate we should be having between now and January 20 > or 21st. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
