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Post, 3/15/08, lead story: "The Federal Reserve took the extraordinary step yesterday of providing emergency funding to one of Wall Street's venerable firms, Bear Stearns, after it ran out of cash to repay its lenders....The Fed's action...is one of the most significant government efforts to save a private firm in modern times."
Hmmm. And the Fed thought this was more important than saving all the homeowners who are being foreclosed in the mortgage crisis that led to the threat to Bear Stearns?
And the Bush Administration thought this was more important than either holding down the price of $108/barrel oil, or - better yet, from my point of view - capturing some of those super-profits and plowing them back into energy efficiency like more transit and green jobs and rebuilding our cities instead of sprawling out to Nunavut?
Or ending the three-trillion-dollar war in Iraq?
Or taxing hedge fund managers at a reasonable rate - people who make super-profits by inventing new and unregulated forms of investment that even Robert Rubin says he can't understand?
And Bear Stearns hasn't been known for its political contributions? 7th in the securities industry in the last ranking I found at OpenSecrets, http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
To be fair, I do have to give the Post a bit of credit: here's how it's many-inch article ends: "In 1998, the New York Fed cajoled all the large Wall STreet firms into buying up assets of the failed hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management to avert a global financial meltdown. All the large firms, that is, except one, which refused to participate: Bear Stearns."
I hope progressive politicians and organizations hit hard on why bailing out a multi-billion dollar fund of the super-wealthy is urgent economic politics, but extending unemployment benefits, or state Medicaid assistance, or forcing banks to renegotiate balloon mortgages, is not.
We need public policies that invest in America's future, and that isn't limited to the richest 1% of the world's population.
Jeff
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