One Detail - No voting shares (4.00 / 1)

At least from the speech, it sounds like Paulson's ruled out buying voting shares - or shares with voting rights - with the exception of voting rights that would protect the direct financial interest of the gov't.

Without real voting shares, government just becomes a financier - with ZERO rights to tell these companies what to do.

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by: tietack @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 00:25:24 AM UTC

Paulson may be a crook. (0.00 / 0)

See my diary: http://www.openleft.com/showDi...

I reference Enghdahl's article. wherein the author makes a case for Paulson having deliberately participated in creating the toxic assets, knowing they would explode, but getting them purchased by European banks beforehand. The goal being a consolidation of banking into the hands of Wall Street, using a pattern going back to at least 1835, but with the added nuclear firepower of derivatives.

If Paulson is a crook, and if he helped engineer the current debacle, then why is the fox in charge of the henhouse?

And just as importantly, where are the Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) in Congress who are calling for investigations to see if Paulson, Joshua Bolten, et. al., colluded to bring us to the edge of a financial precipice? I know that that a lot of this junk is legal, due to lack of regulations, but isn't there a case for a RICO suit based on fraud?  

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by: metamars @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 01:11:48 AM UTC

Labour of Love, Republican of Greed (0.00 / 0)

Gordon Brown has it right on nationalization, as do those who recognize that the U.S. and others (Italy, for example) are dragging their feet and knuckles to execute and act because of ideological biases. Britain's Labour Party is going to lead the world out of this, if anyone can. The Republican Party of the United States will try to give the impression they are going along, but anything halfway is as good as putting out fire with gasoline.

Maybe we should just recognize that Paulson's and the Bush administration's failure to act decisively using all means is preemptive class warfare being waged against us, the ultra rich cashing in their chips and leaving the rest of us hanging out to dry, their final push to grab the remnants of wealth in the world.

I'll tell you one thing, though: I no longer fear complete breakdown, and none of us should, regardless of the potential hardships we may face. I just saw a photo of some Somalians over at the International Herald Tribune, and know we'll never face what they face right now on a daily basis.

Put things in perspective -- as bad as things may get, we will still be better off than millions, billions of others.

Watching our government's relative inaction has me thinking that what's happening has a silver lining, if only we keep sight of it and work our fingers to the bone to recreate, in the simplest, most equitable manner possible, a system for the masses rather than the few.

It wouldn't hurt to have a President Obama on our side, either.

The sooner we can get past the Bush debacle and roll up our sleeves and get to work, the better off we'll be in the long run. We need to do without as much as possible now to get through this the best. We need to shun credit and extravagant consumption, get back to basics, rebuild infrastructure -- physical, energy, agricultural, medical, socioeconomic. We need to implement the response to 9/11 that we turned away from. We need to sacrifice instead of shopping. We need to work with the rest of the world instead of pissing on them.

We didn't ask for it, but we addicts are getting an intervention on the grandest scale. We've got to look at it as a blessing and not a curse.

We have all watched and lamented this country's dismantling over the past 8 years. Yet, we have all we need to make things right again, as we have ourselves.

What matters now is how we set out to put it back together again. Regardless of what the G-7 vows, or what Paulson does or doesn't do, we need to vow to take back what is ours, and to take care of each other, and to never again take for granted our responsibilities to each other and the world around us.

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by: wanderindiana @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 03:06:29 AM UTC

Representation (0.00 / 0)

I don't have the link anymore, but William Buiter's blog in the Financial Times called for permanent representation by the goverment on the board of directors of banks, as a means of giving the American people a voice at the table, in exchange for taxpayer purchases of equity. That brazen economic democracy, offered up by someone from the very top-tier of establishment economists/thinkers, is something straight out of the German model of a market economy, and I would love to see it here.

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by: glacierpeaks @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 04:27:16 AM UTC

No false optimism about the "German model", pls (0.00 / 0)

Actually, banks being owned by the goverment isn't an absolute safegard against horrible economic judgement and bad business policies. Sometimes, it's quite the opposite:

"German ministers have announced three suspensions in the wake of a scandal at KfW, the government bank that inexplicably sent hundreds of millions of euros to Lehman Brothers as it went bankrupt on Monday."
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
:-(

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by: Gray @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 09:30:31 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

If The Taxpayers Own The Banks... (0.00 / 0)

...does that mean we can set compensation levels?   I bet it does.  

I heard an economist yesterday, Peter Morici who I believe is a conservative, theorize that one of the biggest problem in all this mess is executive compensation and wants to see it regulated.  

How much was it a factor?  Could it be regulated?

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by: steve katz @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 14:04:22 PM UTC