This is upsetting – and I suspect the longer they wait to enact something the larger it’s going to get as the panic in the financial sector increases. A friend of mine whose husband was a financial bigwig – he’s been on CNN and on the cover of financial magazines – has been warning me about this for over a year and frankly, I just didn’t believe her. It seems to me that what we lack more than anything is leadership.
Right now the focus is on the blame game, and it’s important to know how we got here so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. But we need to move fast on how to get out. And our leadership can’t or won’t lead. Apparently the Bush administration warned us repeatedly. Congress repeatedly said “thanks but no thanks” to reforms. Cassandra at Villainous Company has a great post on that. Yes, I blame Congress, particularly the Democrats. But what’s the use of a bully pulpit if you don’t use it? Bush didn’t bother to educate people about the Iraq war, hasn’t bothered to educate people about the realities of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and never bothered to do everything he could to get the word out about the upcoming financial crisis. He couldn’t carve an hour out of his schedule for a televised prime time speech? We lack leadership at every level and in both parties, and frankly we have only ourselves to thank for that. And now the bailout is expanding:
Student, car debt quietly added to bailout plan
In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other “troubled” assets held by banks.
The changes, which were included in draft language that also opened the bailout program to foreign banks with extensive loan operations in the United States, potentially added tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the program.
…Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican who announced his opposition to the bailout Monday, said he simply doesn’t believe Mr. Paulson when he says it will solve the market problems.
“His predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year,” he said. “It’s a sad fact, but Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this administration. … There are much better ways of dealing with this problem than forcing American taxpayers to pay for every asset some investor doesn’t want anymore.”
If you can get past that first deplorable “it was a dark and stormy night,” sentence – why not just come right out and call them sneaky? – it’s a good article.
Added: Thanks for the links, STACLU and Michelle Malkin!
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