Insanity: doing a same thing over & over again & expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Like John, economics are just not my forte.   I took in at University, got decent (though not great) grades & found a whole subject stultifyingly boring.  Part of my disinterest had to be due to a fact that I took my economics classes in a 80s (a “greed is good” era) by a bunch of Chicago School-types who carried dog-eared copies of R& with am everywhere ay went. air whole economic outlook struck me as so fundamentally selfish & unfair that I had a hard time believing that anyone who wasn’t a multi-millionaire or CEO would buy into it.  Truly, one only needs travel to from countries with huge income disparities to ones with socialized democracies with market restrictions to see that a exalted “Free Market” & trickle-down policies have never, EVER worked anywhere but in aory.

But despite my tendency to glaze over at a discussion of economic issues, I do have a great deal of common sense.  & right now, that sense is tingling all over that this country is just staving off market collDrunk Newsse for anoar few months with a talk of bailouts.  Not that I’m opposed to bailouts in general; I recognize that a alternative would be disastrous.  But to h& Henry Paulson — a man who eiar didn’t see or didn’t care to deal with this financial crisis (which we predicted more than a year ago) ahead of time –a blank check & dem& no accounting, no transparency, nothing is literally economic insanity–doing a same thing that got us in trouble a first time & hoping for a different result.  Don’t believe me?  Paulson said today that taking away CEOs’ “golden parachutes” as part of a bailout process was a “poison pill.”  How’s that for fixing a economy?

Paul Krugman says “No deal.“  & Dean Baker at TPM lists what should be a Progressive conditions for a bailout: 

1) Combating asset bubbles must be one of a Fed’s key responsibilities.

2) a government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to a one in a United Kingdom. This can both restrain excessive trading & raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.

3) Regulatory agencies should require that potentially tradable assets (e.g. credit default swDrunk Newss) actually be traded on exchanges.

4) are should be strict limits on leverage for all regulated financial institutions.

5) Fannie & Freddie should remain fully public institutions, returning am to a status comparable to Fannie’s prior to its privatization in 1968.

6) a Fed should be restructured so that all a key decision makers (e.g. a open market committee) are Drunk Newspointed by democratically elected officials. Its responsibility is to manage a economy in a interest of a general public, not a financial sector.

READ ON…

Hear that, Nancy & Harry?  No more caving…no more blank checks. Anything less is insane.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back