Earlier this week, Congressman Neil Abercrombie voted against the $700 billion bailout as did the majority of Congress. Today, the House voted in favor of an amended version of the bill. Congressman Abercrombie said the new bill, “offers improvements and protections beyond the original.” More thoughts from the Congressman here.
Unknown Feed
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Flickr Photos
|
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 3, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Karen Awong
I guess I’m a bit confused. I thought this whole thing started because of people not able to pay their Mortgages after the ARM became due. If that is what started it what in the world are we doing takeing care of everything else?
I heard an economist speaking this morning at what he said made sense. Give everyone, across the board, a 5.5% interest mortgage and that would take care of the problem better then what is happening now.
Nothing in this bill takes care of anything I believe we have just lined more pockets.
Oh, and remember too much pork can cause heart attacks.
I’m thinking long and hard about not voting for you and Hirano next time around. I’ve supported you all the way through but I can’t think of any other way to say, I’m sick and tired of all of you guys.
October 3, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Old Haole
So what, Neil. Now the bill has enough pork in it for you? From 3 pages to 351 pages? A few little oversight changes and $150 billion worth of pork. They took a bad bill you wouldn’t vote for, made it marginally better, added pork and now you’re onboard. A plague on both your houses.
October 4, 2008 at 12:32 am
Vanessa Edwards Foster
There’s no guarantee on this other than Wall Street is off the hook, generally (with a few restrictions). The top execs can still find ways to game this system and will still be well compensated both during employ and after dismissal. There’s nothing to prevent us buying a lot of the useless paper debt based on derivatives (we should only be buying mortgaged back debt.)
There’s nothing to indicate it will be good for the economy beyond just freeing credit between banks and the biggest creditors. They will still lend money now, at much higher rates (due to “risk”) and will still keep small business, non-perfect creditors and others representing a good chunk of Main St. under- or non-capitalized. None of the risk to them (banks) is really that alleviated.
Whiile I can see the logic behind raising the FDIC insured level to $250K (to prevent a run by the big depositors), I still don’t agree with it. If other banks fail (and it’s rather likely many will), this will exponentially increase the possible liability and thus more quickly dwindle the FDIC fund.
As for the economy in general, jobs are evaporating before everyone’s eyes and none of that is going to be abated any time soon. The true reason why the economy has tanked has been this corporate giveaway these past eight years, and really no attention to the fact that our disparities, esp. in this tough economy have become emergency-level alarming (or should be). No one notices, in media, in DC, certainly not in corporations where the windfalls are fueling record profit levels and where even though they’re running very lean on manpower, they still manage to squeeze out (due to the sword of Damocles syndrome, pressure and worker desperation) increased productivity and GDP all the while shedding over 3/4 million jobs this year. While wages stagnate for all the lower 90’s, prices escalate. This stagflation is beginning to surpass Ford’s era.
Worst of all is the fact this gives far too much power to the Treasury Secretary. I realize y’all have amended the original proposal, and attempted to put in some safeguards. Keep in mind that Bush signs things with his “signature statements” — meaning he may just remove all the restrictions Congress put in place. True, it’s only while he’s in office for now … but what happens if the next President desires to continue his exec. order? Even on the emergency spending bill, Bush was quoted as saying he “reserved the right to interpret it” as he saw fit (paraphrase).
The premise of this sub-prime mess is concoction of business and false impressions given, and expectations by starry-eyed homeowner wannabes. We should expect both would shoulder a little of the responsibility at least, but certainly the big corporations participating in this knew it was a Pyramid scheme. We’ve now shown them the morals of this lesson — that unlike individual citizens who’ve been hammered or overextended, we will allow them to make such truly comprehensive mistakes and/or scams.
If these same banks can ask for changes to bankruptcy laws, with an imperious attitude of “let them die” and expecting their newly enacted laws to be notably punitive, it is beyond hypocrisy for them to expect, much less receive anything but a “let them die” response in return, regardless.
Yes, it seems self-destructive perhaps. But where I am, hope died years ago. Since 2002, I’ve seen my situation go from a full-time job with medical, to only temporary, catch-as-catch can types for even some big corporations (I currently work for Shell Oil, training the folks in Chennai, India to assume my job and all our Finance jobs on Oct. 31 — times are tough in Big Oil, eh?) Did likewise for another large bank just last year. We are, as we’re removing our middle class, creating a two-caste country. There will be the elite business owner/upper management class, and a desperate working poor — similar to Latin American democracies such as Pinochet-era Chile. Make no mistake, when you cut out the entire discretionary spending of over 90% of the population, you will have a massive economic slowdown (recession, depression, whatever you wish to call it.) Even with Wall Street’s dodging the bullet, we in regular America will not. We’ll get hit with our bullet and theirs, and the bleeding will be intense.
Beyond just the spectre of the coming depression and challenge of finding income is this: I’m transgendered. Do you have any idea how difficult that can be in searching for work, esp. here in Bush’s back yard — Houston? Even if we get Pres. Obama elected, we still have to worry about Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign stripping us out of the bill. We have no voice for our community on the Hill, much less any political representation. We’re already way below the national average on income and employment levels as is. This giveaway (on top of everything else) of some of my tax responsibility to people who wouldn’t even hire, much less care for folks like myself, being taxed with no avenue to represent myself or my community’s views is beyond frustrating. I cannot adequately express the distress this causes.
Nevertheless, it’s too late now. It’s passed, and the President happily signed this in record time (that should be a signal to you that something’s not right), and what was already a bad condition is now exacerbated simply to help all the wrong people. Rep. Brad Sherman and Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s quotes were spot on the money. This will be a decision that will come to be regretted in the months and years to come.
It’s a sad day for America, and a very dark day for me personally.
October 7, 2008 at 7:08 pm
L. Lee
Same exact bill, except it now costs Taxpayers an extra $150 Billion in Senate-Added pork.
I hope Hawaii will receive or somehow benefit from those added “sweeteners”.