Here are some questions that are and aren't being asked about the bailout. First, what is *not* being asked:
1) Why the Friday deadline? Seems like no one is asking this, and the main answer is that Congree is going on vacation after Friday. Certainly the Bush administration and Treasury are bringing this up at a bad time, but shouldn't Congress seriously consider postponing their break, and staying in session longer to consider more closely this massive government outlay? If there are specific banks at risk, they aren't being named directly.
2) Why $700 billion? Did Paulson just come up with this number? How about starting with a smaller number and then coming back to Congress for a follow-on request?
Then some good questions that are being asked:
3) Why no oversight? Dodd and the Senate Banking Committee made clear they would not accept the original "no oversight" clause proposed by Paulson.
4) Will golden parachutes be eliminated? Again, Dodd is on this.
5) Where is the money going to come from? Chris Matthews of Hardball asked this, and speculated sale of T-Bills, but then went to a commercial break, and did not get details on this from his guests.
2008-09-23
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Here's an idea. Instead of giving bailout money to corporations for worthless paper, just give every American citizen, man, woman and child, $2000 tax free. This will cost a bit less than the bailout. The money will go into the economy. And this way at least we'll all get some benefit from this fiasco.
The companies that are worth anything will get bought. The companies that are now worthless will fail, and the bits that have worth will be sold off. The world will not end. We will probably end up with more foreign ownership of these companies... but what can we expect when we are printing money like mad, with a huge national debt and huge trade imbalance. Those dollars will come back one way or another.
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