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Whose
Bailout Is This?
The
Working Families Party urges Congress to help the middle class
get through the current financial crisis
Across New York state, members of the Working Families Party
have filed petitions with Congress calling on the body to
resist pressure from the White House and the international
financial community to unconditionally hand over $700 billion
to bail out the nation’s ailing financial industry.
More than 10,000 members have launched petitions through the
WFP to New York’s senators and the representatives in the
House.
“This
crisis is fundamentally fueled by people who were allowed
to buy up these mortgages, cut them up into a thousand pieces,
and repackage them and resell them as something that they
weren’t,” said WFP spokesman Dan Levitan. “This was a new
form of trade that Wall Street sort of invented in the last
10 years, and it really took off in the last five years. And
they would say what they were selling was safe, and the government
let them do it with a wink and a nod, and the bond raters
let them do it with a wink and a nod.”
This, he added, was the direct result of the Bush administration
letting Wall Street run wild. “This is a classic right-wing
ideology that says what is good for Wall Street is good for
America.”
Yet now, with the financial turmoil spreading far and wide,
and talk of stagflation and depression looming, many pundits
are commenting on the irony on Wall Street. The finance ideologues
are casting off their beloved laissez-faire and running to
Washington for a bailout—eagerly restructuring investment
banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies
with much stricter regulatory oversight than they had in their
former incarnations.
The WFP doesn’t want Congress to put up $700 billion under
the terms that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally
proposed, especially given the widespread perception that
the bailout would function as a subsidy to elite Wall Street
executives and investors. And Levitan challenges the premise
that the big financial firms are “too big to fail” because
their collapse would have devastating effects on the U.S.
and world economies.
“This
bailout goes to benefit the same people who got us into this
mess, right?” Levitan asked. “If we are going to do that,
Congress should bail out middle-class families too. And there
are a lot of proposals floating around about how to do this.
But there is a serious question here: Why isn’t the middle-class
too big to fail? Why is only Wall Street too big? When something
bad happens to them, the state is there to step in. This crisis
is hitting working families across the country.”
Representatives for the 20th and 21st Congressional Districts,
Mike McNulty (D-Green Island) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-Greenport),
have both described the situation in Washington as fluid and
volatile. They are waiting to see the results of the legislation
that the House of Representatives produces, and said that
they are committed to forcing the best possible outcome for
the middle class.
But the pressure coming from the White House, economists and
the international financial community is colossal. The WFP
is hoping that the Democrats will follow through with some
of the early movements toward broad reform, but the pressure
to act could blind them to the actual dangers, said Levitan.
“You got these mortgage-based assets. Nobody knows how badly
they are going to do, ’cause nobody knows what they are worth.
You can’t sell them ’cause you can’t price them. You can’t
get rid of them ’cause you can’t sell them. Nobody has ever
experienced something like this before.”
“Right
now the Democrats are saying some of the right things,” he
continued. “Our point is that they need to spine up and really
commit to use this crisis to do something for middle-class
families, too. Don’t back down. The problem with Democrats
is not that they don’t know what is right. The problem is
that they don’t actually follow through. And that’s always
been the role of the Working Families Party—to be a pressure
from the left when push comes to shove, and it is shoving
right now.”
—Chet
Hardin
chardin@metroland.net
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| What
a Week |
|
Oh,
the Humanity!
In
the face of the current state of the American
health care system and the ongoing health care
debate, Americans may have a hard time empathizing
with the French, who are facing cuts to their
national healthcare system. French President Nicolas
Sarkozy has cut funding for half of the country’s
165 physiotherapists at the National Baths of
Aix-Les-Bains. As a result, the physiotherapists
have gone on strike. Sarkozy has begun to take
on France’s state sector industries, which have
regularly scared away attempted cuts by previous
French leaders. In a recent speech, Sarkozy recently
pointed out that there are 721 French diplomats
in the former colony of Senegal, which only has
a population of 12 million—while there are only
271 diplomats in India. “How is that normal?”
Sarkozy asked.
Oil
Zombies
Democratic
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had a run in
with protestors who were holding McCain signs
and chanting “Drill here! Drill Now!” during the
Democratic National Convention this week. The
speaker paused and then responded, “Right here?”
“Can we drill your brains?” Pelosi went on to
call the protestors “the handmaidens of big oil”
and the “two-cents-in-ten-years crowd,” referring
to the amount she thinks off-shore drilling will
reduce the price of gas.
The
Day the Swinging Died
Capitol
Region pundits and reporters lost one of their
favorite subjects this week. A Slingerlands psychiatrist
put in the winning bid to buy the Union Street
Bed and Breakfast in Schenectady, effectively
ending the run of the swinger hangout that features
a sex dungeon in its basement. Owner Bob Alexson
has said that he was not driven out but has chosen
to move on. Alexson clearly did not consider what
area columnists and anchors would be left to write
about with his sexy B&B out of the picture.
For
the Dogs
A
Seattle woman who registered her dog to vote—a
protest against the lax oversight of voter registration—had
fraud charges dropped against her this week. The
judge dismissed the case, sighting that the woman
had already paid over $200 in court costs. The
woman did not try to hide the fact that her dog
was registered, and she pointed out that the dog
never actually voted.
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Peace
Now
Photo:
Chet Hardin
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The
Rev. Willie Bacote of Troy’s Missing Link Men’s Ministry led
a march Tuesday from his Lansingburgh home to the heart of
North Central Troy. The small but devoted group of city residents
hoped that their efforts will help curb the violence that
is tearing at the fabric of the North Central community. The
march concluded on Bond Street with a nighttime vigil at the
spot where 25-year-old Dustin Smith was shot and killed earlier
this year.
| Loose
Ends |
|
-no
loose ends this week-
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