House Passes Bail Out Bill
With the economy on the brink and elections looming, Congress approved an unprecedented $700 billion government bailout of the battered financial industry on Friday and sent it to President Bush for his certain signature.
The final vote, 263-171 in the House, capped two weeks of tumult in Congress and on Wall Street, punctuated by daily warnings that the country confronted the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression if lawmakers failed to act.
Bush was poised to make a statement on the historic vote.
“We all know that we are in the midst of a financial crisis,” House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, said shortly before casting his vote for government intervention in private capital markets that was unthinkable only a month ago.
“And we know that if we do nothing, this crisis is likely to worsen and to put us into an economic slump like most of us have never seen.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill was needed to “Begin to shape the financial stability of our country and the economic security of our people.”
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One more thing: Just to explain why I said that this bill is instituting fascism…In fascism, profit is privatized and risk is socialized. So, is the U.S. really a free market anymore? Something to think about.
Let me point out why I am so nauseous. Let’s start with McCain: The Republican nominee was for the original bill PLUS 1,400 pages of pork-barrel spending. This makes him a gigantic hypocrite because the man says he is against pork-barrel spending, earmarks, etc.
So, what we see here is the attaching of stuff to a bill that has absolutely nothing to do with the bill but makes it more attractive for certain members of Congress to pass it. This is comparable to an action that would eliminate an excise tax on rum products from the Caribbean. That would be great for rum manufacturers
and importers, especially for those dwelling in Florida. Why? Well, it would reduce the market price of rum by – let’s say – a dollar, and that dollar would otherwise be spent on an import tax to the government. The bailout bill was LOADED TO THE BRIM with stuff like that. Just think – 1,400 pages long – who could possibly read all that in one day?
Not to mention, the bill is unconstitutional in so many ways. Finance and appropriations bills have to originate in the House of Representatives – NOT the Senate. With the Senate voting on this bill first, it has violated an important check and balance. In law (ha!), the judicial branch should rule it unconstitutional immediately. However, we all know how unlikely that is since the Supreme Court justices are probably being bribed or something – who knows? That’s the only way I can possibly think to explain it.
Nobody on Wall Street actually thinks this bailout is going to help. And that’s why the markets are continuing to tank. In my opinion, this bill was a last-ditch effort for BushCo to loot the treasury and plunge EVERY American taxpayer into $4,000 of debt.
What’s even more – the worst part is that the people who are taking a leadership role in this new staff created by this bill are the same mortgage giants that created this whole mess in the first place, and they now want to fix it? There is only one way we can fix this whole situation- we need to remove the ability of the federal reserve to levy interest on the money it creates.
So, this is what I propose: Let the banks fail, have a depression and get it over with. Otherwise, the whole world’s economy will vaporize into interest. Congress screwed up big time, and a lot of people are realizing it. Listen to what Ron Paul says.
This makes me nauseous. There is no other way to put it: This bill institutionalizes fascism in the USA.