Bush Brings WMD Line To Wall Street

He is at it again, trying to give the treasury sweeping powers they shouldn't have.

Bush Brings WMD Line to Wall Street

Monday 22 September 2008

by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Will the Bush administration succeed in rushing through a massive check to Wall Street? (Illustration: ABC News)

Remember how President Bush got Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell to run around warning about Saddam Hussein's nuclear bombs? This phony scare tactic got Congress to give him the authorization he needed to start the Iraq war.

Even though his credibility has vanished, in large part because of the Iraq war, President Bush is again using a lie to cow Congress into giving him a huge blank check. This time, the check is for $700 billion, to be handed over to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to spend pretty much as he wants.

Also see below:
Dean Baker | Progressive Conditions for a Bailout •

The lie in this case is that if Congress doesn't cough up the money immediately, the banking system will collapse and the economy will fall into depression. To be fair, there is more truth to this story than the Iraq WMD line.

The policies of President Bush and the recklessness of the Wall Street crew really have brought the financial system to the edge of an abyss. There was a near meltdown last week as Lehman Brothers, the huge investment bank, collapsed; and AIG, the nation's largest insurer, followed suit. Banks stopped lending to each other, creating a situation in which our system of payments (e.g. checks and electronic transfers) stopped functioning.

The Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury then took a variety of extraordinary measures to patch things together and get the financial system working again. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the system really is on edge at the moment and that the collapse of another giant financial institution can set off another panic. Still, Congress has some time in this story to deliberate about how a bailout should be structured rather than just handing over a blank $700 billion check to Henry Paulson, as the administration requested.

Just to be clear, we are in this mess for two reasons. First, the financial regulators, both in the Bush administration and more importantly at the Fed, were completely asleep for most of the decade. As the housing bubble grew to ever more dangerous proportions, and lenders adopted increasingly questionable lending practices, the regulators did nothing.

The other reason we are in this mess is that the Wall Street banks got themselves hugely leveraged in real estate and other assets. In many cases they had no appreciation of the value of the underlying assets. They also apparently did not understand the complex financial derivatives that they had themselves created.

Now this situation has exploded in their faces, sinking several of the country's largest financial firms and bringing dozens of others near the cliff. As a result of the recklessness of the Wall Street gang, the economy is now facing a recession, with the unemployment rate rising rapidly. Millions of families are losing their homes.

So what is President Bush proposing? He is telling Congress that everything can be put back in order if they just give $700 billion to Henry Paulson, with no strings attached.

Keep in mind that Henry Paulson is himself one of the Wall Street gang, a former head of Goldman Sachs who pocketed hundreds of millions from the sort of deals that have wrecked the economy. He also managed to get just about everything wrong in his assessment of the economy. He missed the housing bubble altogether and then underestimated the seriousness of the financial crisis at every turn.

We cannot afford to give Paulson a blank check. Congress must first insist on some serious accountability in the bailout process: that means a board that involves Congressional appointees and a high level of transparency.

Congress should also insist that the Wall Street crew pays for its incompetence. An absolute cap of $2 million in annual compensation for any executive of any firm taking part in the bailout seems fair. The taxpayers should also be compensated for their support. The government should acquire an ownership stake in the companies that it bails out. For example, for every $10 billion in bad debts it buys, the government should get $2 billion in stock. That way, the taxpayers stand to get back some of their money.

There are more conditions that should be imposed as part of the bailout, but the key point is that Congress has time to structure the bailout to serve the country's interest. It should not allow itself it to be bullied into again giving the Bush administration a huge blank check.

The Bush Adminstrations War on Charity

Some more crimes against humanity by Bush & Co...

t r u t h o u t | The PATRIOT Act's War on Charity:

"The PATRIOT Act's War on Charity

Tuesday 05 August 2008

by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Report

Since the PATRIOT Act's passage almost seven years ago, many of its adverse effects on activist organizations and peace groups have become plain. The law grants the government broad new surveillance privileges and access to private property, and protests and demonstrations have been heavily monitored and contained in the wake of 9/11. But according to a new report, the worst effects on nonprofit organizations have garnered little attention. New powers granted to the Treasury Department currently allow the government to shut down charities based on unfounded claims; to bar nonprofits from operating in some international disaster zones, and to freeze the assets of 'designated' charities, leaving large sums of money intended for humanitarian causes to fester indefinitely in Treasury vaults."

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An Analogy of The Bush Foreign Policy

Here is a great story, That has a little more meaning to it then just the story that it is about. It is in essence a GIANT analogy of the Bush Foreign Policy. It is sad but it is news we need to hear.

The Wedding Crashers: A Short Till-Death-Do-Us-Part History of Bush's Wars

Sunday 13 July 2008

by: Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com

It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch," veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26 year-old bride said her vows. More than 200 members of her extended family and friends were on hand, as well as the 14 women in her "house party," who were dressed "in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match[ed] the palette of... wildflowers - blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds." Afterwards, in a white tent set in a grove of trees and illuminated by strings of lights, the father of the bride, George W. Bush, danced with his daughter to the strains of "You Are So Beautiful." The media was kept at arm's length and the vows were private, but undoubtedly they included the phrase "till death do us part."

That was early May of this year. Less than two months later, halfway across the world, another tribal affair was underway. The age of the bride involved is unknown to us, as is her name. No reporters were clamoring to get to her section of the mountainous backcountry of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. We know almost nothing about her circumstances, except that she was on her way to a nearby village, evidently early in the morning, among a party 70-90 strong, mostly women, "escorting the bride to meet her groom as local tradition dictates."

It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. "They stopped in a narrow location for rest," said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. "The plane came and bombed the area." The district governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told the British Times, "So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried. Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6.30AM. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead."

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News Links

I have added some links to the Sidebar. These are some of the best and most honest news sources I have found. I wanted to share because good information these days is really hard to find. As I find others I will post them. Check 'em out!