What are your thoughts on this bailout?  It is constitutionally illegal.  According to the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution corporate welfare is not an issue the Constitution permits the Congress to undertake.

Do you think it should happen?  No, but it will happen.

What should/will we do to prevent this type of scenario in the future?  We should vote people into Congress who will honour their oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" 
What most American voters will do is vote for either McBama or O'Cain, either of whom will continue running the country into the ground under the direction of their puppet masters.  

We are being told thru the mainstream media that Congress must decide between voting NO and allowing the American financial system, and possibly the global financial system as well, to destruct, and voting YES and saving the global financial system by empowering the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to continue diluting our dollars to provide bailouts for financial institutions that made bad decisons up to a cost of $700 billion (more likely trillions of dollars ultimately).  All with no mention, of course, of devaluation of the dollars we already hold.

In reality, Congress will decide between voting NO and allowing the free market to liquidate bad debts and unviable companies by allowing market prices to prevail,  or voting YES and allowing the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to provide bailouts for financial institutions that made bad decisions with supposedly only $700 billion, and more likely eventually trillions of dollars, created by what amounts to counterfeiting, leading to inflation and decreased puchasing power of the dollar at best and the destruction of the dollar at worst.

I hope everybody realizes that "we the people" are being set up to take the hit for the blunders, if they were really blunders instead of engineered events, of some major financial institutions.

In the last 50 years of my lifetime of 70 years, I have seen the US$ loose about 90% of its purchasing power. 

Either most in Congress have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or are wanting in the integrity to be guided by it.

I suggest contacting your congressional representative and senators immediately if not sooner, and tell them to stand up for the Constitution, the free market, and the US$ by voting NO on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill.

We are having socialism rammed down our throats. Let them suffer the consequences of their actions. Yea we might have problems ourselves, but they will be far less then what is being proposed.

I've heard another simple explanation for the financial crisis. The Fed increased the money supply drastically when they dropped interest rates really low. Then when they raised them sharply that cut the money supply quite a bit. When there's less money companies tend to fail. The same thing happened with the Great Depression.

You know, though, despite all the truly scary things going on in the economy and the world, we're so blessed to have had the counsel of the prophets. At the very least, for instance, I know I have food storage. I know how to garden. If worst comes to worst, I won't have to watch my family starve in front of me. The Lord is good to us.

Here is an interesting article.Super Black Monday?

Jim Rogers of Fox Business News said that the bailout is a bad idea. He asked, "Why should 300M Americans suffer so that 1000 people on Wall Street can keep their Maseratis?"

I just keep thinking if we don't take the hits now and let the market correct itself without gov't intervention... our kids and grandkids will be more screwed than we are.

Now what? Something tells me they aren't giving up on this yet. Maybe they'll just re-word the title of it, and no one will no the difference?

The bailout was rejected and the predicted loss of 1/3 of the value of the stock market did not occur. Airplanes didn't fall out of the sky and cats aren't living with dogs in harmony. Though early in the process, I think this shows that the bailout was just a gift to the uber-rich rather than something that would "save" our economy from sinking into 1930s depression. Hopefully all the Chicken Littles (Bush, Democrats, Paulson) will stop their incessant squawking. Perhaps the House Republicans (with the aid of some democrats) will be emboldened to keep this bad piece of legislation down. 67% of House Republicans and 40% of House Democrats listened to the people. Is there hope for America afterall? Were those founding fathers actually inspired to create a legislative system that worked this well, even with politicians as crooked as ours?

-- Edited by Organist at 17:03, 2008-09-29

I've heard folks predict that the Dow will be at 6,000 by Thursday.

Why the collapse?
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The financial crisis of the past year has provided a number of surprising twists and turns, and from Bear Stearns Cos. to American International Group Inc., ambiguity has been a big part of the story.
Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.
But really, it isn't. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.
The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.
Turning Point
Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.
It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.
Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even ``on the page'' of allowable interpretations.
Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a ``world-class regulator'' that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.
Greenspan's Warning
The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
Different World
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. Greenspan exits the scene.
That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''
Mounds of Materials
Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.
But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

And as you all know, I'm no fan of John McCain.

Well, the bailout has been approved by Congress now. $700 billion is just a downpayment on what we will be paying. And even at terms much more favorable than the US government is going to get, the interest that we'll pay to borrow the $700 billion for the bailout is just staggering.

So, Coco, soon you'll be working at The People's Socialist Zion's Bank. I'm sure they've made a bad loan or two that the government will be eager to buy up.

Since it is the Federal Reserve that is coming up with the "scratch" for the bailouts, this might (I hope) be of interest. 

Marilyn Barnewall wrote for NewsWithViews on 28 November 2008 the following:

"The Honorable Louis T. McFadden, Congressman from Pennsylvania, leveled charges at the Federal Reserve Board on the floor of Congress that would have made the most aggressive conspiracy theorist blush.

"McFadden accused the Federal Reserve of swindling the U.S. Treasury, of conspiring with their foreign principals (central banks in other nations) and others to defraud the American government. Thus, the charges I would make against the Federal Reserve in 2008 were first made in 1932 by a U.S. Congressman.

"As if that were not enough, McFadden further told his compatriots on the House floor that the Fed had "robbed the U.S. government and the people of the United States by their theft and sale of the gold reserves of the U.S."

"On June 10, 1932, Congressman McFadden launched a twenty-five minute tirade against the Fed. Some of his remarks:

""Mr. Chairman, we have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a government board, has cheated the government of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt."

"McFadden continued: "The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over.
 

""This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.""

"On May 23, 1933 - less than a year after his 1932 tirade - Congressman McFadden brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, the Comptroller of the Currency and the United States Treasury. He charged them with "numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, conspiracy, fraud, unlawful conversion, and treason."

The petition for Articles of Impeachment was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, but no action was ever taken by the Congress. It was never rejected or acted upon. Looking at Congressional records, it appears McFaddens charges are still pending against the Fed."

http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest134.htm

We need to rally behind the legislators and Senators who are opposing this. I'm going to check and see who my reps. are and tell them to stop the madness and let the economy alone.  They've damaged it enough already.

"President Obama's promise that, "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," will go down to haunt him like the Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Banner. When inflation comes back people will initially think a recovery has arrived, but fast rising prices will soon begin to rob all existing assets and savings of their value. A true recovery could only happen if the government and people were willing to take dramatic and honest steps to instill true fiscal and economic restraint upon the nation: Cut spending (no more deficits, no more foreign aid, no more welfare), create a solid gold backed currency, let the insider speculators and banks fail, and drop all regulatory and tax requirements related to employment. Regulatory and tax costs of employment are the number one disincentive to hiring in the incipient phases of small business growth and one of the main reasons employers seek to take jobs overseas. All of these changes together wouldn't halt this difficult transition period, but at least it would create honest expectations for slow, steady and stable future growthwithout creating another bubble. Instead, we are starting down the path of draconian fiscal irresponsibility, warned against by the Austrian economic adage: "when you bailout an economy with ever increasing doses of fiat money, each subsequent boom-bust cycle is larger and more violent than the last." That's the fundamental law of economics that is bearing down on us like a future tidal wave and there is no escape."  Joel Skousen, Editor, World Affairs Brief 27 February 09

I have been absolutely 100 percent against the bailout from the beginning. Free enterprise should've been allowed to work itself out. This bailout and stimulus package is doomed to failure. Obama and Pelosi, among others, should be impeached for the dread circumstances they are laying at the feet of our children and grandchildren. Shame on them.