Here's the 451 page bailout bill they passed. It is shameful because it is impossible that each of them could have thoroughly studied a document that big before voting.
More details as they come.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Senate passes bailout bill - If bill passes Congress you are all in debt forever
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Interestingly, the House's bill had 110 pages. The Senate package has 451 pages. Clearly this one has to be better.
My eyes glazed over reading through the Senate version. It is packed full of updates to energy subsidies, very specific tax breaks (like for makers of wooden arrows intended for children but not suitable for a bow) and all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with what really needs to be done.
If I understand things correctly, it grants, in phases, what could be up to $750 billion in a revolving credit line that can be used to buy up troubled assets and either hold them or attempt to resell them.
So the basic story behind everything is:
Our government and our citizens over extended themselves with too much debt (105% 125% mortgages, maxed out ARMs, zero down) and were assisted in this process by loose fiscal policy by the Federal Reserve which artificially manipulates interest rates and kept them too low, too long.
The lenders are complicit in this, but the government also mandated (Community Reinvestment Act) that they make loans they otherwise would not have.
Once one or two lenders started having to write down assets, THEY ALL had to start writing down assets thanks to "mark to market" accounting rules mandated by the government. This created balance sheet problems that toppled more institutions over the edge.
So, the solution is more government intervention and creation of more debt in the credit line?
In the meantime, there are trillions of dollars sitting overseas that could be repatriated if not for the heavy impact of our 2nd highest in the world corporate tax rate.
What a mess D.C. can make of things. Of course, it's always somebody else's greed or incompetence never their own.
There is something seriously wrong and suspicious about this rush to political bailout now filled with pork. Call and demand this be defeated.
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