http://www.michael-hudson.com/interviews  /080917AIGbailout.html

One of the main principles on which global capitalism is built is that if you cock it up, you’re on your own, and if you go under, you go under. This rescue is spectacularly contrary to that principle, and as such can only have been justified on one ground, and one ground alone: without it, the entire US and therefore global banking system was going down the toilet. Whether that was the case, I don’t know, and I suspect that whether one takes comfort from the rescue, or is horrified at the implications of it being necessary in the first place, depends on one’s philosophy of life.

Americans are too complacent, indifferent, disconnected and, frankly, stupid, to realize they should be out in the streets protesting this governmental folly. So they’ll pay come tax time (an average of $3000 per taxpayer) and the economy will right itself much more slowly than it would have otherwise.

We have to demand different candidates in this election. We cannot elect EITHER candidate. What to do? This whole system has become a joke.
I think we need to redo the conventions and nominate at least ONE major party candidate who is not an idiot and self-interested traitor. Funny, Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate who had the balls to talk about this stuff and he was right on the money. I think we need him as the candidate.

We need to try these lunatics for treason—both the deceitful and incompetent aristocrats and their thieving feudal lords, and stow them in cages deep within the earth to live with their like-kind. We have become, in short order, the center ring of the circus for all the countries of the world to mock and deride. Democracy? Capitalism? These are fairy tales the rich tell the weary. Was it not a few years ago that Wall Street pilfered the retirement accounts of the American people in the Dot.Com festival? Their hearts now desire money not yet made. The American Dream has thus become indentured servitude.

However, there is one thing that cannot be stolen and that is a desire among her people for truth and for justice!

From a European/Greek point of view, I think we all have something to gain from this billionaire’s bailout. Americans are finally starting to understand that the New York and Washington political and financial elites of the US are just THIEVES! No one in the US seemed to care when they stole Iraq’s oil, or when they made billions from child labor in China. Now that they’re stealing 700 billion dollars from their pockets, Americans are finally realizing how dangerous this whole gang is. Is it really an awakening of the stupid? Who knows? We should never underestimate their stupidity!

Who is the government going to tax to get this $700,000,000,000? Putting this in perspective, the US Census Bureau American Factfinder, 2007, lists 94,817,488 full-time American workers. At $700,000,000,000 bailout divided by those earning money, the debt per worker is $9,382.60. Now I think that the government ought to return this tax money to those who paid the taxes in the first place and in the form of a 5 year, 6.25% annuity at the very least. That would return the money back to the taxpayers at a rate of $2,110.65 per year over a 5 year period. Of course, if the tax is progressive, as it should be, then the annuity principle should be adjusted progressively too.

The real problem here wasn’t deregulation or free market capitalism. What everyone is missing is that we haven’t had a deregulated, free market for decades. Between Greenspan’s aggressive asymetrical approach to injecting liquidity when the market was under stress and the unatural buying of US Dollar assets by the Chinese government to keep their import machine going, we had two huge non-free mkt forces impacting asset values. These two forces created excess liquidity that prevented capitalism from self correcting. Its that simple.

Basically this financial crisis was produced by those
CEOs from investment banks such as Goldman Sack,Morgan Stanley etc. They created some sort of financial tools or packages to expand their profit base so that in the end they get their bonuses before they retire.

Unfortunately, the consequences of irresponsible lending had led to this credit crunch. Traditionally this would be resolved through the free market system. But now the U.S.government wants the tax payers to take the responsibility, in the name of ‘maintaining the financial stability or preventing job loss’.

First of all, it is not fair. Secondly it is going to change the nature of the U.S. market from a free market to a socialist market with heavy government intervention.

In fact by proposing the 700 billion dollar programme is purely a political action because they are going use tax payers’ money to bail out the mistakes made by the Republican government in the last 8 years. Deep in nature, they are only throwing 700 billion of tax payers’ money to buy time until the November general election.

However,there are many smart Democrats in the Congress. They would be able to judge how the republican government is politicizing the financial management of country which is not really good for the national interest. Instead of solving the problem, this proposal could only delay the crisi for only a couple of months.

To conclude, the near 1 trillion Dollar tax payers’ money should not be spent indirectly on helping the Repuclicans to win the next election.

The short sellers squawk because gambling in the market is their life. The essence of shorting is the borrowing of shares. This alone increases the supply of shares available to be bought. And increased supply always drives down prices. Right? So shorter #1 shorts and drives down the price. Shorter #2, seeing the price dip, shorts some too. Shorter #3 does too. And the shares tumble. I think shorting should be banned. And the loaner who is loaning out the shares should be taxed to the hilt just in case the clever gamblers find a loophole.