It seems like American’s have finally cottoned onto this Administration. Michael West sums it up:
HENRY Paulson has got to be kidding. He wants American taxpayers to hand a cool $US700 billion ($A833 billion) to his pals on Wall Street in return for a gigantic bundle of their delinquent assets … without his pals taking a pay cut.
Could there be a finer reward for failure? Could there be a worse deal for taxpayers?
No stake in the upside, no ceiling on extortionate Wall Street salaries, no guarantee the system will be stabilised. Just the mother of all rip-offs: a deal to privatise Wall Street’s profits and socialise its losses.
The bailout and accompanying legislation will give Paulson’s former colleagues at Goldman Sachs a leg up by being able to borrow at cheaper rates than other investment banks. The whole process will prop up land prices for longer than need be.
Instead of socialising the losses, the government should switch the land titles of the 3 million odd subprimers over to the Community Land Trust model, diminishing the capacity for such boom-busts and helping the economy correct itself more rapidly with little cost to the community or taxpayer.