As the plans for the massive Wall Street bailout slowly emerge, not trusting the Bush administration or its flunkies, Bernanke and Paulson, takes on even more importance.

 

The Bush, McCain, Bernanke, Paulson Republican plan should send a clarion warning to the American people about this deceptive and dishonest regime.  This financial catastrophe is now reaching Main Street.

 

From the NYTimes: "For many Americans, the events that have transfixed and horrified Wall Street in recent days” the disintegration of supposedly impregnable institutions, government bailouts with 11-figure price tags” have been less stunning than inscrutable. The headlines proclaim that the taxpayer now owns the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the liabilities of a mysterious colossus called the American Insurance Group, which, as it happens, insures against corporate defaults. Much like the human appendix, these were organs whose existence was only dimly evident to many until the pain began.

"Yet these institutions are deeply intertwined with the American economy. When the financial system is in danger, it stops investing and lending, depriving people of financing for homes, cars and education. Businesses cannot borrow to start up and expand.

" ' Wall Street isn't this island to itself, said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute. 'Even people with good credit histories are having a very hard time getting loans at terms that make sense. If that gets worse, we're going to be stuck in the doldrums for a very long time, because that directly blocks healthy economic activity.'

"The financial crisis gripping the United States is the direct outgrowth of the speculative orgy in real estate that began early this decade. Once home values began falling two years ago, the financial institutions that had poured capital into real estate confronted a very big problem."

What the article fails to say is that the entire mortgage system from real estate appraisals to the lenders to the Wall Street investment bundlers gamed the system by artificially inflating the cost of housing, intentionally giving questionable, risky loans, all in an effort to line their pockets with millions aided and abetted by the Bush administration's deregulatory, ignore the danger, policies.

The Times continues: "But significant skepticism confronts the plan. Under a proposal circulating Saturday, the Treasury could spend as much as $700 billion to buy mortgage-linked investments, then sell what it can as it works out the messy details of the loans. But no one really knows what this cosmically complex web of finance will be worth, making the final price tag for the taxpayer unknowable. One may just as well try to predict the weather three years from Tuesday.

"Also, what message does that send to the next investment bank caught up in the next speculative bubble and contemplating the risks of jumping in while wondering who is ultimately on the hook if things go awry?"

Henry Paulson was bloviating with the talking heads this morning and his message about the Bush bailout plan was this: 

1) No accountability for this horrible catastrophe by anyone, not the mortgage lenders, not other financial institutions, not Wall Street investment houses, not the Bush administration, no accountability period.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  

2) Congress must give the imperial, greedy, criminal Bush administration $700 billion in taxpayers monies to bailout the perpetrators of this fainancial catastrophe by doling out almost $1 trillion as they see fit to thei corporate cronies on Wall Street. 

3) There will be no Congressional oversight for the American people of the Bush regime bailout even though the Bush regime helped create this disaster 

4) Corporate executives, the perpetrators in this debacle, must still receive their millions in compensation

5) The almost $1 trillion bailout will be paid for by the American people who were scammed, screwed, and, defrauded by these greedy, corporate criminals with the support and assistance of the Bush criminal regime, but homeowners with mortgages should expect no relief at the $700 billion corporate welfare trough even though its their money that Hank and Ben will be doling out to Wall Street without oversight.

This is the Republican Bush regime's bipartisan bailout plan: those who caused this 2st century "Great Depression" should be rewarded including this administration..

The Democrats must say no to this Bush, Benanke, Paulson fraud. 

Unless there is effective, strong Congressional oversight of the Bush regime regarding the bailout the Democrats in Congress should give a resounding no to this plan.  In fact, Congress should appoint a labor union official (s), a real working class representative, not the corporate crony supporting  Bush regime, to oversee the bailout for the people's representatives on Capitol Hill. 

 Unless the American taxpayers have a real say in this bailout, unless the perpetrators are held accountable with no compensation, this is just another in a series of blatant criminal acts by the Bush administration against the American people.

And impeachment is still off the table.