--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What good will it do to call Congress?
Probably not much. They already know most of their constituents hate the bailout, and they hate it too. The smarter ones know, however, that as awful as the bailout is, and even though it's not guaranteed to fix things if does pass, the situation *is* guaranteed to be far worse if it doesn't pass, something their constituents--including Michael Moore--haven't figured out. The threat of financial collapse is real, and it's desperately urgent. It would be lovely if it were just the Wall Street fat cats who would suffer, but it's not, it's all of us. And we will suffer significantly more than they will. They can afford to lose some financial weight; the rest of us can't. Moore's rant is ignorant, if not dishonest. <snip> > The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all > about. True strictly speaking, but only in a literal interpretation of the word "all," meaning down to the very last detail. Part of the *need* for the bailout is that investor confidence is down the tubes because there's so much uncertainty. The bailout is designed to *reduce* the uncertainty and restore some of the confidence by giving a value to certain assets whose worth isn't currently known. > Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the > exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion > number out of his head!). As I pointed out in an earlier post, this is a feature, not a bug. It's simply not possible to determine the exact amount--again, that's the basis of the problem in the first place. Paulson didn't pick the $700 billion figure at random, though; he picked a number he felt would be significantly more than would be required, again, to increase confidence that the government will be able to follow through on its plan. > The head of the congressional budget office said he can't > figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone. I don't know whether the head of the CBO is an expert in financial markets; it's not necessarily the case that a congressional budgeting expert knows much about the kind of investments involved in the current crisis. Also, it would be important to know exactly what he said, which Moore doesn't tell us. Moore's could well be a misleadingly loose paraphrase designed to make his own points. <snip> > Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower > the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. > NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. > NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance. All too true, but irrelevant. The issue is whether *not* passing it will *raise* the price of gas, make it *more* likely that you'll lose your home and *less* likely to be able to afford--or even obtain--health insurance, not to mention avoiding bankruptcy if you get sick without insurance. > Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this > got to do with the Wall Street collapse? > It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was > triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on > with people's home mortgages. Key word: *triggered*. Not *caused by*. What has caused the collapse is the shaky underpinnings of the entire financial market. That the housing crisis could bring down the markets is a symptom of how bad a shape they're already in. > Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To > hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working > class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't > afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people > declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. This is a very fancy and deliberately misleading switcheroo. Bankruptcies *per se* are a non sequitur. Having one's home go into foreclosure and having to declare bankruptcy are two different things that are not inevitably connected. <snip> > 1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Etc. Actually what you should be doing is *trusting Obama*. I have grave reservations about him on other grounds, but in this case he knows what he's doing. It's ironic that Moore, who has been such a fervent Obama supporter, is now telling us Obama is on the side of the fat cats and the Bush administration. > Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down > and figure out what's the best route to take. He already *has* figured it out. He thinks the bill should pass. > When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every > one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the > consequences of your actions at some point. In this great > democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast > majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for > the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a > silver platter. No more! Not again! Indeed. But there's no way to fix the rules *and* avert a financial catastrophe--for all of us, but *particularly* for us ordinary folk--at the same time. And changing the rules after such a catastrophe is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Changing the rules will help only if we can keep the horse in the barn. <snip> > P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason > so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend > put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 > billion or the first thing we'll start blowing up are the > pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The > Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. It would be important to know exactly who these people are in DC whom Moore knows; it would also be important to know exactly what they said, rather than trusting Moore's paraphrase. The fact is that pension funds and 401(K)s will blow up *automatically* if the collapse isn't averted. It won't be "Wall Street" doing it deliberately to get back at the Democrats. Wall Street will be unable to keep that from happening even if it wanted to. And it *does* want to--it makes a lot of money off those funds and 401(K)s. > But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical > Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems > handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the > votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took > over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. They did all the above. But it's simplistic to assume they're doing the same kind of thing now. It actually will take a lot of courage for them to pass this bill given the widespread sentiment against it. They're doing the right thing for once. Also bear in mind something Moore conveniently doesn't mention: the *Republicans* in Congress hate the bill even more than the Democrats. If it doesn't pass, it'll be because of *Republican* opposition. This financial crisis is different from anything we've ever faced because of its incredible complexity and its extreme urgency. Everyone concerned is winging it. Nobody likes the bailout, including Wall Street. It's a tourniquet to stop what will otherwise be fatal bleeding. That's overwhelmingly the top priority. Figuring out what antibiotics to prescribe to prevent infection comes second. There won't be any patient to treat if we don't apply the tourniquet first.
