Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was making the rounds on the Sunday news shows trying his gosh darn best to sell us on this bailout, but one fact remains: he's gonna need a lot more lipstick.
$700B Dollars.
According to CNN, that's $200B more than the cost of the Iraq War, $100B more than Social Security payments last year, 9 times the cost of education last year, 35 times the cost of all foreign aid in most years and would buy enough oil to last US consumers 300 days or 2000 McDonalds apple pies for each man, woman and child in the US.
That's a lot of apple pies. So where are the assurances from Paulson that this plan will work? There could be more bank failures, jobs lost, a worsening of the economy even if this plan is implemented.
And what happens if it's not? The only report I've seen in the MSM so far is from CNN.
CNN Business correspondent Christine Romans, who has covered the market for 15 years, reports with certainty, "What we do know is what the economy can look like without a bailout."
The amber (amber...nice touch) graphic on screen reads:
ECONOMY WITHOUT A BAILOUT
What could happen:
-Companies can't make payroll or pay bills
-Consumers and small businesses can't get loans
-Corporate profits fall, hurting govt. revenue
-Companies are not going to hire people, they're going to lay people off.
-Housing prices fall ("and fall hard, and fall fast!" she adds)
-Property taxes decline
-Funding drops for schools and local services.
Well at least there's no mention of mushroom clouds yet.
She continues:
"It's really a big confidence game too, I mean you gotta have confidence in these financial institutions otherwise they're not lending money to each other and if they're not lending money to each other then the rest of us aren't getting loans and people are pulling in our, our home equity lines of credit and, and, and we're not getting car loans, we're not getting student loans, and all of that just chokes the economy. And if the economy is choked and we don't grow then everybody hurts."
And what about implementing the plan?
"...There are always unintended consequences but what we're also hearing is that, um, that is a risk that has to be taken, this has got to be done fast because the certainty, uh, is, is much much worse so this is just, this is all weigh..[she sighs] you know it's who do you trust, it's who do you trust, the banks have already gotten, you know the banks have already gotten us into a whole heap of trouble, um, you know, and I'm going to say one last thing a couple of people have said to me, listen this is all about people, at its core, this is about people who took, took out home loans and they couldn't afford it. This is about people getting more than they could afford and, and, and I've heard an awful lot, there's an awful lot about this going on, on talk radio too."
Ah, so a "couple of people" have told her that at its core, this economic meltdown is not about greedy CEOs or Lobbyist or a failed Conservative economic philosophy - it's all the fault of, you know...those other people.
But then she mentions that more than one Mayor, County Attorney and Wall Street Guru has told her that poor people didn't get us into this trouble, the banking sector got us into this trouble and now tax payers are going to pay for it.
Well that clears it up for me.
The sick and demented, fiscally conservative imposters of the modern Republican party. By all means, let's put them in charge.
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