Bush Using Market Collapse To Get More Power, Blank Check
As we continue to embrace socialism as a way to save our collapsing economic markets, Bush is asking for sweeping new powers for his administration and a big-ass blank check.
Um... let me just say that again - as a way of dealing with this crisis which largely resulted from a lack of oversight and regulation, Bush wants sweeping new powers and a boat load of money.
The Bush administration formally asked Congress yesterday to grant sweeping new powers to the Treasury secretary to buy as much as $700 billion in deeply troubled mortgage-related assets as part of a Herculean effort to clean up Wall Street's financial crisis.
Hasn't experience shown us that giving the Bush Admin more money and power is always a bad idea?
This is textbook Disaster Capitalism as described by Naomi Klein's fantastic book The Shock Doctrine.
Dean Baker has a list of suggestions instead of the more power and money that the Bush Administration is seeking:
1) Combating asset bubbles must be one of the Fed’s key responsibilities.
2) The government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to the one in the United Kingdom. This can both restrain excessive trading and raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.
3) Regulatory agencies should require that potentially tradable assets (e.g. credit default swaps) actually be traded on exchanges.
4) There should be strict limits on leverage for all regulated financial institutions.
5) Fannie and Freddie should remain fully public institutions, returning them to a status comparable to Fannie’s prior to its privatization in 1968.
6) The Fed should be restructured so that all the key decision makers (e.g. the open market committee) are appointed by democratically elected officials. Its responsibility is to manage the economy in the interest of the general public, not the financial sector.
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