Senate passes bailout package, now it's on to the House
Peter Zethraus
Issue date: 10/1/08 Section: Opinion
This past weekend was a marathon of congressional meetings between the Senate and House members attempting to come to some sort of compromise over President Bush's proposal for the $700 billion bailout.
The proposal, if approved by Congress, would allow the federal government to spend
almost a trillion dollars to buy bad mortgage debt and help "mitigate" the financial crisis, "the most sweeping economic intervention by the government since the Great Depression," according to the cnnmoney.com market report for Sept. 22, 2008.
It has actually been quite reassuring to see what appears to be a bipartisan agreement
manifest itself out of this terrible situation from the last couple of weeks, and also to
see both parties working together to create the only viable and immediate remedy to our
economic problems.
Our current financial crisis has seen the collapse of multiple Fortune 500 investment
banks in just the past two weeks, including Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. With many other banks struggling desperately for help, including American Investment Group (AIG), which the Federal Reserve agreed to bail out for $85 billion, the Bush Administration's proposal unfortunately appears to be the last course of action.
I find it absolutely despicable that an administration that has advocated little to no
governmental regulation on corporations such as these banks-who are freely able to
gamble away the life savings of everyday, hardworking Americans-now have to spend nearly a trillion dollars to save our debilitated economy from financial disaster.
For an administration and a party that has historically cited that big government is not
the answer and have not been one to favor big spending, here they have been left with
little recourse. It is tempting to wonder if we would be in the same situation if we were
not spending over a trillion dollars on the Iraq war.
It's just so unfortunate that the problem has been allowed to go to this catastrophic level in the first place. Imagine what $700 billion could do if it was not going to the
greedy investment banks that put our country in this situation. This bailout appears to be the solution at the moment, but one cannot help but feel that
it is only giving Wall Street a slap on the wrist.
Despite the $700 billion bailout and whether it will be successful or not, we need to
take adequate steps to prevent something like this from happening again. Both
presidential candidates agree on the bailout, but more importantly, both agree that we are
on the verge of a massive economic crisis. If we do not take steps to hinder Wall Street's investors taking advantage of our free-market system, I
honestly feel that we will be on the verge of repeating another Great Depression-esque
financial collapse.
The proposal, if approved by Congress, would allow the federal government to spend
almost a trillion dollars to buy bad mortgage debt and help "mitigate" the financial crisis, "the most sweeping economic intervention by the government since the Great Depression," according to the cnnmoney.com market report for Sept. 22, 2008.
It has actually been quite reassuring to see what appears to be a bipartisan agreement
manifest itself out of this terrible situation from the last couple of weeks, and also to
see both parties working together to create the only viable and immediate remedy to our
economic problems.
Our current financial crisis has seen the collapse of multiple Fortune 500 investment
banks in just the past two weeks, including Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. With many other banks struggling desperately for help, including American Investment Group (AIG), which the Federal Reserve agreed to bail out for $85 billion, the Bush Administration's proposal unfortunately appears to be the last course of action.
I find it absolutely despicable that an administration that has advocated little to no
governmental regulation on corporations such as these banks-who are freely able to
gamble away the life savings of everyday, hardworking Americans-now have to spend nearly a trillion dollars to save our debilitated economy from financial disaster.
For an administration and a party that has historically cited that big government is not
the answer and have not been one to favor big spending, here they have been left with
little recourse. It is tempting to wonder if we would be in the same situation if we were
not spending over a trillion dollars on the Iraq war.
It's just so unfortunate that the problem has been allowed to go to this catastrophic level in the first place. Imagine what $700 billion could do if it was not going to the
greedy investment banks that put our country in this situation. This bailout appears to be the solution at the moment, but one cannot help but feel that
it is only giving Wall Street a slap on the wrist.
Despite the $700 billion bailout and whether it will be successful or not, we need to
take adequate steps to prevent something like this from happening again. Both
presidential candidates agree on the bailout, but more importantly, both agree that we are
on the verge of a massive economic crisis. If we do not take steps to hinder Wall Street's investors taking advantage of our free-market system, I
honestly feel that we will be on the verge of repeating another Great Depression-esque
financial collapse.
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