[Peace-discuss] Learned opinion on the bailout

[C. G. Estabrook]

"The point is this is one of the most important irrevocable economic decisions
we will ever make. Let's make it in a state of panic." —Stephen Colbert

"The fox is guarding the hen house." —A heckler mocking Treasury secretary Henry
Paulson

Senator Bunning: How long were you CEO of Goldman Sachs?
Audience: (Laughter and applause from a Code Pink supporter skeptical of
Secretary Paulson.)
Code Pink woman: And what's your net worth?
Senator Bunning: I don't need help from the audience, I can ask the questions on
my own...

"I'm not going to fire you; you can still be called Congress. But you don't have
any power." —Jon Macey, Yale Law School professor and deputy dean, providing an
allegory for Secretary Paulson's proposal

"As of now we [journalists] are, as a group, behaving just as we did the last
two times the administration sought to rush through a hastily thought out,
ill-conceived plan. Why in the world are we being so gullible and naive?"
—Former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston

"What the proposal actually did ... was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus
grant immunity from future review ... if Paulson can't be honest about what he
himself sent to Congress ... there is no reason to trust him on anything related
to his bailout plan." —Paul Krugman

"If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts ... won't saddle American taxpayers
with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don't know politics
... Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of
so many for ... so few." —Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor

"We are talking about ten thousand dollars per household, and that money cannot
simply go into a black hole of bad debt." —John McCain

"Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from
this Administration... Secretary Paulson's market predictions have been
consistently wrong in the last year." —Republican Senator Jim DeMint

"Normally, this is a process that would take months — years."  Instead, the law
is being worked out, live on television, over the course of a few days. —NPR,
quoting the chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, Scott Talbott

"This is scare tactics to try to do something that's in the private but not the
public interest. It's terrible." — Allan Meltzer, former economic adviser to
President Reagan and Carnegie Mellon professor of political economy, quoted in
the New York Times

"Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been
sobering and a little frightening." —Newt Gingrich

"Many economists argue that taxpayers ought to get more than avoidance of the
apocalypse for their dollars: they ought to get an ownership stake in the
companies on the receiving end." —New York Times front-page analysis by reporter
Peter S. Goodman

"Seriously, is there anybody out there willing to write George Bush a blank
check?" — Democratic Activist Christine Pelosi

"No 'cash for trash.'" —Dennis Kucinich, proposing Americans should also take
partial ownership of any institutions receiving bailout money.

I think it's embarrassing to the United States of America. There is a lot of
blame to go around." —Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

"For anybody out there living in cave, let me just say this. Congratulations.
You've apparently made the soundest real estate investment possible." —Jon Stewart

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