World-News

Time for a bank holiday

The Nation
by William Greider

11/19/08

Henry Paulson’s $700 billion plan to save the world is dead or dying, but the bailout was not killed by his arrogance or his grossly misleading claims about what the public’s money would buy. The plan collapsed because it didn’t work. The Treasury secretary has launched a PR offensive to revive his falling influence. Too late. The Democrats should be equally embarrassed. In September their leaders in Congress rushed to embrace the Paulson solution, no hard questions asked. They now claim they were duped...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081208/greider



The trouble with bailouts

Tennessean
by Joe Scarlett

11/20/08

In the old days bank robbers went to jail. Today, the bankers and the robbers are one and the same, and they are being rewarded for incompetence with huge bags of extra money, courtesy of us taxpayers. We have centuries of history that prove that markets don’t go up forever. Bankers, more than almost any other group, should know this and if they do not, they should not be bankers. When bankers give mortgages to those who obviously can’t repay, there is a serious shortage of basic common sense (or maybe just plain stupidity) as well as a lack of financial responsibility to stockholders and customers. When you look at today’s banking and real estate crisis, it is clear to even the least sophisticated among us that common sense has been lacking and basic ethics are out the window...

http://tennessean.com/article/20081120/BUSINESS01/81120031


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Paulson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=$700
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=mortgage
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=real+estate
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Greider