Beyond the Bailout: What Happens Next

Government is the problem, not Wall Street. Government coercion forcing banks to make loans to uncreditworthy individuals is the problem. Following are parts of a solution:

- Close up shop on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

- Repeal regulations forcing banks to make sub-prime loans for social engineering purposes. (Although the purpose was noble, it was neither constitutional nor practical.)

- Allow corporations to purchase insurance on bundled loan packages rather than a taxpayer bailout.

- Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, especially ridiculous mark-to-market rules that unfairly wreck corporate balance sheets.

- Cut corporate and capital gains tax rates in half. We are not bringing in revenue with these taxes right now anyway. Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the industrial world. Lowered rates would bring new investment and new jobs.

Buffal0Bill of VA 11:40AM September 30, 2008

She really blew her career!!How could a women be so utterly stupid.My daughter-in law (a staunch democrat)made this remark to me last night "I can not understand how she ever got that position!Thae peaple that elected her must be BRAINLESS!"She said some other words about her that i cannot say!!

shirley of NH 9:21AM September 30, 2008

Let's just think about this for a moment, Mr. Rick Newman, for U.S. News and World Report. Concerning your recent article and the underlying name calling contain therein, I would like to comment. First of all, let's take the financial crisis in the U.S. The original amount was $510 Billion reported to the people of the U.S., and now it's $700 Billion. There are over 204 million people in the U.S. If you take the mortgages of the people that are supposedly causing the current financial crises, of which their average mortgage is $264,000. If you do the numbers, you will see that the supposed financial crisis that is being blamed strictly on the people going bankrupt is less than 10% of the population of the entire United States. I know that there are other factors in there, i.e. people who rent versus people who have a mortgage, etc. It is hard for me to believe that the small minority of people going bankrupt against their mortgages is responsible for such a very large debt and the fall of the stock market. It seems to me that there is a lot of money out there that is not being disclosed to us, the people of the United States, from businesses that have other monies that they invested into other venues besides in the mortgage game. Why should we, the people, let our government bail out businesses with our tax money when we don't have all the facts? Our government has bailed out several businesses, i.e. the airlines and AIG. Not only that, but they want to do it without putting it to a vote by the people. In past experience when we bailed out the airlines, they gave their CEO's millions of dollars in bonuses and the government allowed them, under the bankruptcy laws, to get rid of their employees retirement funds. This allowed a big corporation to screw over the little guy that made their businesses flourish in the good times. Large corporations have lost their values and their way. Enron is another perfect example of a large corporation screwing over the little guy. Those of us that are workers for these large corporations outnumber the CEOs one to one thousand. In other words, and these numbers are not totally correct, there is one CEO getting millions of dollars in bonuses while over one thousand employees no longer have a retirement fund or medical benefits. The last time I did the math on this it sure in the hell didn't add up!

I am one of the little guys working for a larger corporation. My wife and I, at one time, had our own business. We were doing good as a mom and pop operation, and with the good times flourishing, we expanded. Everything on paper seemed great. Then the large corporations didn't pay us. This forced us to shut down our operations altogether. Now I'm back, and content, working for a large corporation. We got ourselves out of our predicament because of large corporations not paying us. It took a lot of time and hard work, with both my wife and I working, to get ourselves out. I still worry about the economy and how am I going to send my children through college so that they don't end up in a situation like mine.

I don't see why my tax dollars should go to bail out corporations doing bad business. The bad business that these corporations did was wrong and they need to pay the piper. These corporations were trying to boost their bottom line and look good on paper, getting fat on the little guy and screwing him out of his retirement. All of us that are getting screwed out of our retirements and are still paying extravagant taxes and are now being asked to pay to bail out the same companies that already got our money in the first damn place. So you see, we aren't worried about our "stock portfolio." We are worried about what bank we can trust, about where our money is safe at, and who is going to screw us over or go belly up taking our money YET AGAIN! It's beginning to look like it's back to the old "stuff it under the mattress" standby in order to make sure that we can stay fed and warm.

All these lawmakers that we, the people, put into office get to take money from lobbyist of these same companies that are going under to help them out. Before our government ever came up with this "idea" to bail out these companies, they should have thought about the constituents that put them there. I find this all a personal betrayal from our government. It's already bad enough that we have a vice president elect Sarah Palin and her entourage that is able to defy subpoenas. Let one of us, the people, try to defy a subpoena. Most of us can't afford the fines or attorneys that it would take. Most of us would get arrested in our homes. This is one example proving one of our elected officials is able to defy the law. Our officials are not above the law or the constituents that put them there. Our government has forgotten about our own constitution in which it states, "Of the people, for the people, by the people."

Jim C of AK 5:36AM September 30, 2008

Am I the only one so naive as to think that debt itself might be the problem? No one has remotely questioned the slavery that debt always produces. We as a nation celebrate our philosophy of a debt driven economy, yet want to point the finger at anyone stands in our way of digging our own grave deeper.

K. Carlson of CO 11:26PM September 29, 2008