unless there is a mind-boggling, massive write-off of all the financial b.s. that's been going on for a long, long time, this stimulus will do very little.

just love the mental gymnastics dem-apologists like scheer go thru to explain away the simple and obvious fact that this is fully 100% a bipartisan catastrophe.

the goal of all this maneuvering is to get the gov't, you & me, to guarantee the toxic assets of our financial institutions (and not at their real market value, not by any stretch).

and scheer, you be sure and let us know when the obama admin makes a dent in that defense budget. not gonna happen. bush I mentioned a 'peace dividend'. why didn't clinton make it happen?

Just wondering, how are we supposed to finance this "package"?

My understading is that this year's defecit will come in around $3 trillion.

Even if China, Saudia Arabia and Korea wanted to they could only finance about $1 trillion.

This means that the remaining $2 trillion would have to come from the good 'ole printing press at the Treasury.

This will quickly lead to runaway inflation, which could end up being worse than doing nothing.

I'm not sure where I stand on this "package", but we should at least consider the risks involved on the flip-side, which no one is talking about.

If the ability to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions is a benchmark for being an adult; the Repugs haven't even reached puberty.

I thought that when Alan Greenspan admitted the faults in trickle down economic theory that other Repugs would follow. I was wrong. Like many teenagers who find themselves in self-created difficulty, they continue to lie and shift blame until their parents wear down. Consequently, it is the responsibility America's adults to take the brats to the woodshed and keep them there until they accept the truth.

Have you spanked a Repug today?

The title points to throwing so-called 'good' money after 'bad'...

The US dollar is a fiat currency, not based on anything of intrinsic worth or value. It is not based on a tradable physical commodity or labor. It is tied heavily to the investment/ banking 'industry'(Which is a remarkable concept, because said 'industry' actually produces... nothing).

The US dollar only has 'value' because the US government SAYS it does!

Therefore it is nod 'good' money. It is not money at all! It is, at best, a promisory note that can not be honored.

The IMF recently stated that the US, along with other MAJOR nations, are in DEPRESSION, not recession.

Greenspan, the economic 'guru' who led the US by tyhe nose into this stinking mess, said yesterday taht US banks should be nationalised. If Greenspan, a hardcore Keynsian, is walking down this 'socialist' road, you can bet you ass the US economy is in DEEP trouble.

Walk in peace.

The Washington-Wall Street Axis of Evil was asked a simple question: "Do you save US-style crony capitalism with its warped financial system or do you save the US middle class?" None who frequent CD should be too surprised by the answer.

Mr. Scheer,

You blame the wrong people. It is not the Republicans fault for being careless, selfish foxes, they always have been. It is not the Democrats fault for being clueless shills of the plutocracy, many of them are members of that plutocracy too, and vote for their own interests.

This mess in the USA is the fault of the American people. They have adopted the values and interests of the ruling elite. The have a slave mentality.

Please attack the correct problem.

There an easy fix to all this. Cut all taxes of all types to anyone making a million dollars a year or more from any source.

This extra wealth will ensure those people invest in new jobs for Americans.

Right?

Remember every cut in taxes is ALWAYS followed by an increase in tax revenues.!

Right?

"Furthermore, it is obscene that the Republicans who created this mess dare question the cost of a stimulus package directed at meeting a crisis that their radical deregulation of the financial markets created."

And of course Mr. Scheer conveniently forgets that it was Democrat Bill Clinton that signed into law the repeal of Glass-Steagall which went a long way toward today's resulting crisis.

Thats the trouble with Republicans and Democrats. Always blame the other. Never take any responsibility for your own mistakes. Propaganda propaganda propaganda.

"While approving of $125 billion in payouts to AIG and tens of billions more to each of the top banks, they question spending far smaller amounts to aid the victims of bankers' greed;"

All of the common stock of AIG could have been purchased outright for less than that $125 billion (the fact that AIG got an additional $40 billion after the first $85 billion is usually not mentioned in the MSM which continues to use the $85 billion figure), and this is true of at least some of the large "investment banks" that have received multiple billions in "bailout" funds which undoubtedly will never be repaid. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for all of this? Why shouldn't the shareholders be assessed a certain amount for each share of stock? Its THEIR company, not mine.

-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw

Why has no one else proposed this greatest of all ideas, collective capitalism?:

Escaping the Bust Bowl

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 11, 2009, NYTimes

In a moment, we’ll come to a two-step solution to the banking mess: First, tar and feather America’s 100 leading bankers; and, second, take over insolvent banks and distribute shares to members of the public (without ever using the term “nat...” — oh, never mind).

But first, let’s look at the problem. President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stumbled badly in introducing the bank bailout. But the larger conundrum is that a bailout is both: A) urgent and essential; and B) unfair and unpopular.

I was The Times’s Tokyo bureau chief during much of Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s, and one of the lessons of that debacle was the need to attack a major downturn with Colin Powell’s doctrine of “overwhelming force.” The neo-Hoovers criticizing today’s stimulus package make perfectly valid points about this or that flaw in the stimulus package. But the alternative is perhaps three million fewer jobs and the national economy looking like a balloon losing air.

Another thing: those railing against the stimulus are often the same folks who inherited an economy producing budget surpluses and transformed it into today’s fiscal catastrophe. In rural Oregon where I grew up, we were taught that if you’ve made a huge mess in someone else’s living room, it’s not polite to denounce the cleanup.

Japan also showed that you can’t fix an economy without fixing the banks. The term “zombie banks” was popularized then, referring to banks that were half dead but always allowed to stagger on. They must be put out of their misery.

Yet Japan also underscored that you can’t resolve a crisis when the public is more interested in punishing banks than rescuing them. That’s why I suggested tarring and feathering a group of prominent bankers. Populist rage then would be satisfied, and we could get on with reviving the banks.

Not feasible, you say?

A more plausible approach might be the one that some White House aides unsuccessfully argued for: tougher curbs on executive compensation. The Obama administration in theory limits certain compensation for top executives in companies receiving taxpayer dollars to $500,000, but the plan has loopholes big enough to drive a Mercedes through.

Yes, troubled banks might lose good people to hedge funds that can pay more because they’re not bound by these curbs. But that upsets me less than the idea of single mothers working multiple jobs so that their tax dollars can underwrite million-dollar bonuses at companies getting taxpayer assistance.

Tom Peters, a management expert, suggests capping the pay of C.E.O.’s receiving bailouts at that of a four-star general. As for the concern that the executives would quit, who cares? Mr. Peters writes that if all the top executives of the Fortune 500 companies were exiled to Elba, “performance of their companies would not on average deteriorate.”

As Representative Barney Frank asked the bankers testifying on the Capitol Hill dunk-tank on Wednesday about their bonuses: “Why do you need to be bribed to have your interests aligned with the people who are paying your salary?”

Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat of Missouri, had it right in her recent legislative proposal: cap compensation for all employees at companies receiving bailouts at the salary of the American president, which is $400,000 a year.

The administration should also uproot subsidies in the tax code for excessive executive compensation. Stratospheric compensation is unhealthy enough — why subsidize it? The Institute for Policy Studies estimates that these subsidies cost taxpayers $20 billion annually.

A tough stand on these issues might help give Mr. Obama the political space to bail out the banks; otherwise, it’s hard to see why the public would support a bailout of the size necessary.

As for the nature of the bailout, President Obama pointed to Sweden’s resolution of its bank crisis as a solution. “They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again,” he told ABC News on Tuesday. “So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model.”

Mr. Obama then suggested that it wouldn’t work in the United States, partly for cultural reasons. But a broad range of experts believe that some variation of nationalization is the only way to revive the banks quickly without squandering vast amounts of taxpayer dollars. Even the managing director of the International Monetary Fund suggested that Washington think of the Swedish model.

America’s horror of “nationalization” could be defused by handing out shares to all American households. President Bush used to talk about building an “ownership society.” Well, giving shares in big banks to all American households would be a terrific way to do that.

For many Americans, it would be the first time they directly owned stock — and, finally, something good could come from the banking Bust Bowl of 2009.

Robert Scheer wrote:
“The decisive deregulation that opened the door for the Wall Street swindlers was pushed through Congress by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican. He was rabidly backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.”
_______________________________________________________________________________

Mr. Scheer,

That is only part of the truth but is not the whole truth.
You forgot to mention that bill was supported
enthusiastically by Robert Rubin, secretary of treasury in the Clinton administration and was
signed by Bill Clinton.
There is no REAL difference between the Republicans
and the Democrats. It is all theatrics, posturing
and make-belief bullshitting.
Both of them agree on the continuous shifting of the
nation wealth to the super-rich and impoverishing the
middle class and the poor.

I'm glad the that the conservative Republicans and their water carriers in the media and clergy are so intransigent, unrepentant and oblivious to the horrendous legacy they've created with their economic, regulatory, environment, scientific, military and foreign policies. Never have so many been so wrong about so much.

Their gleeful embrace of greed, elitism, contempt for the poor and working classes, warmongering, war profiteering, corruption, torture, renunciation of the Geneva Conventions, neglect of infrastructure, massive deficit spending and politicization of the government reveal their true values and speak far louder than their smarmy, self-righteous sophistry.

As a result, they've relegated themselves to a long term as a regional party destined to remain in the minority nationally.