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By Marybeth Hamilton
By Carl Safina
$15.55
$22
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Turns out that having Phil Gramm on one’s economic advisory team may not be the best way to demonstrate one’s readiness to inherit the gigantic mess that the U.S. economy has become under the Bush administration’s not-so-close watch—or at least that’s what Obama’s camp is pointing out in this ad on the financial debacle.
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commons.wikimedia.org / Ramy Majouji
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Truthdig’s editor in chief warns against thinking about the economic crisis as an “act of God,” saying “this is man-made” and that the individuals responsible are well known and entirely too influential in the current election.
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Hey, now that Jon Stewart mentions it, that whole government bailout thing starts to sound a lot better: We, the taxpayers, just bought a really, really big insurance company. That’s like having two hotels each on Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, right?
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Whither Lehman Brothers? Et tu, Merrill Lynch? What’s going on on Wall Street? Jon Stewart breaks down the financial meltdown on Tuesday night’s edition of “The Daily Show”—complete with ‘80s monster movie allusions. Sweet!
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listphile.com
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Here we go again: The Federal Reserve is bailing out another tanking financial institution—the insurance behemoth American International Group—by sinking $85 billion into AIG in return for a stake in the company. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a Wall Street investigation following this latest startling agreement between big government and big business.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. attempted to head off mounting market woes and investor freak-outs at the pass on Monday as Wall Street suffered its worst losses since right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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George W. Bush rode into office with a budget surplus, courtesy of his predecessor. When he leaves in January, he will not return the favor. The White House estimated the budget deficit for next year at a record $482 billion—and that doesn’t include the full cost of two wars, the potential bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the full stimulus package or the loss of tax revenue from an economy in the toilet.
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The independent Congressional Budget Office has announced the expected federal taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will appear as a $25 billion budget expense, but that the real bill could be anywhere from zero to $100 billion. This, even though the once-governmental agencies were formally privatized in 1968.
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Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were always more foul than fish, says Robert Borosage, and the bailout announced by the Treasury secretary over the weekend will mean “private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside.”
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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President Bush is still insisting that the U.S. economy is in generally good shape, even as he asks Congress to support legislation to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while insisting in the same breath that he’s not proposing a “bailout” for the ailing mortgage companies. Hmmm.
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Flickr / caswell_tom
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According to a new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll, the vast majority of Democratic voters in the next three primary battlegrounds want the government to bail out struggling homeowners. Most don’t seem to care that the Fed rescued Bear Stearns; they just want the same treatment.
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publicradio.org
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With a mind-set reminiscent of the Bush administration’s recent bailout of mortgage lenders, the Senate last week approved the Foreclosure Prevention Act, a bill that provides billions of dollars in tax breaks to big businesses like Ford and General Motors but takes only modest steps in addressing the plight of homeowners.
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By David Sirota — The Federal Reserve Bank’s decision last week to address the housing crisis by extending $200 billion of taxpayer-financed credit to Wall Street banks was met with a stunned reaction typical of surprising events. But really, the move was the expression of longstanding isms that routinely package corruption as sound public policy.
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