Socialist Bernie Sanders Says No To Bailout

[Orange_Juice]

He speaks much truth!

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

By Senator Bernie Sanders

The current financial crisis facing our country has been caused by the extreme right-wing economic policies pursued by the Bush administration. These policies, which include huge tax breaks for the rich, unfettered free trade and the wholesale deregulation of commerce, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.

The middle class has really been under assault. Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, median family income for working Americans has declined by more than $2,000, more than 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, over 4 million have lost their pensions, foreclosures are at an all time high, total consumer debt has more than doubled, and we have a national debt of over $9.7 trillion dollars.

While the middle class collapses, the richest people in this country have made out like bandits and have not had it so good since the 1920s. The top 0.1 percent now earn more money than the bottom 50 percent of Americans, and the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The wealthiest 400 people in our country saw their wealth increase by $670 billion while Bush has been president. In the midst of all of this, Bush lowered taxes on the very rich so that they are paying lower income tax rates than teachers, police officers or nurses.

Now, having mismanaged the economy for eight years as well as having lied about our situation by continually insisting, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” the Bush administration, six weeks before an election, wants the middle class of this country to spend many hundreds of billions on a bailout. The wealthiest people, who have benefited from Bush’s policies and are in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all. This is absurd. This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.

In my view, we need to go forward in addressing this financial crisis by insisting on four basic principles:

 

[AllieBaba]

And this is more bs. The middle class hasn't "slipped into poverty." We have had an influx of illegal (and legal) aliens who have flooded our economy...the result being we have a whole population of people, first generation Americans, who are at the bottom of the economic ladder.

The Democrats insist that we provide to them all the privilege and benefits that their native Americans, who have worked generations to reach the levels they have, and in doing so we have destroyed our housing market and screwed up health care.

This is what happens when you insist on "equalizing" everyone.

Take the illegals and the first generations out of the equation, and you will see that middle class Americans are doing just fine. I'm not saying they don't have a place in America, I believe they do and I don't resent immigrants one little bit. But don't use them to portray American capitalism as a failure.

 

[Chris]

Bring the troops home and put them on the Mexican border.

 

[Orange_Juice]

And this is more bs. The middle class hasn't "slipped into poverty." We have had an influx of illegal (and legal) aliens who have flooded our economy...the result being we have a whole population of people, first generation Americans, who are at the bottom of the economic ladder.

The Democrats insist that we provide to them all the privilege and benefits that their native Americans, who have worked generations to reach the levels they have, and in doing so we have destroyed our housing market and screwed up health care.

This is what happens when you insist on "equalizing" everyone.

Take the illegals and the first generations out of the equation, and you will see that middle class Americans are doing just fine. I'm not saying they don't have a place in America, I believe they do and I don't resent immigrants one little bit. But don't use them to portray American capitalism as a failure.

Oh great, illegal aliens are the cause of the Capitalist meltdown now

 

[editec]

) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

The truly wealthy won't take incomes to avoid it. Those working hard enough to actually be worrth that much money(and there are people woorth that kind of incomes) will be disencentived from working that hard.

Nice plan, but it won't help.

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

How? Its the pseudo science that we CAN assign risk that got us into this mess to begin with.

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Great idea. Send the stock certificates to every taxpayer according to how much taxes they've paid in the last ten years or something.

(2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

Good idea...but where the money come from to pay for it? The same place we got the money to buy AIG, I imagine. We invent it.

Further, we must protect working families from the difficult times they are experiencing. We must ensure that every child has health insurance and that every American has access to quality health and dental care, that families can send their children to college, that seniors are not allowed to go without heat in the winter, and that no American goes to bed hungry.

Again, who pays? I'm onboard...just as soon as you show me the numbers that make sense.

(3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999. That means re-regulating the energy markets so that we never again see the rampant speculation in oil that helped drive up prices. That means regulating or abolishing various financial instruments that have created the enormous shadow banking system that is at the heart of the collapse of AIG and the financial services meltdown.

Yeah, regulation is a grand idea.

The horse is flown from the paddock, but in the off chance we ever own another horse, closing the gate next time sounds like a grand idea.

(4) We must end the danger posed by companies that are “too big too fail,” that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

Shades of the Sherman Anti-trust act. Teddy would be proud, Bernie. right on!

We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up. Right now, for example, the Bank of America, the nation’s largest depository institution, has absorbed Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest brokerage house. We should not be trying to solve the current financial crisis by creating even larger, more powerful institutions. Their failure could cause even more harm to the entire economy.

Beyond my ken to know how to do this.

When a company is so big that it can distort the markets to its own advantage, that's probably the time to consider if that constiutes a threat to society generally.