Bailout Bill Text Online
Bailout Bill Text (pdf)
Congratulations to McCain and the House Republicans for making this a much better bill than it was. McCain was active in contacting the Republicans on Saturday. It's odd and bizarre even that the Bush administration has been 'taken over' by Paulson who is NOT a Republican but a Democrat. Given how awful Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid and Dodd and Frank are, it's suprising it's not worse. Taken out were the provisions for ACORN, for unions on boards, etc.
Section 132 directs the administration to consider suspending mark-to-market. Good, now is the time for the administration to act on that. Oversight is better, and there is the insurance concept the House Republicans advanced. There is no assurances that the taxpayers are to be protected, but there are some interesting provisions that will help. One is that transactions have to be publicly posted within 2 days. This means there will be a public record of the quasi-'market' of such purchases.
There are "plans to minimize foreclosures" which basically means that the Federal Government is taking over millions of housing units, ie., you are now dependent on the forebearance of the Treasury Secretary. Hmmm, are Democrats thinking of turning a liquidity program into a $700 billion HUD program?
Malkin crowd don't like the bill period but this comment recognizes the role of the Republicans in making it better:
The role played by John McCain appears to have been a constructive one. He supported and worked with the House Republicans. The Democrats no doubt wanted his support for the final product, and that must have enhanced the Republicans’ position at the table. The Democrats would not have wanted an unpopular bailout plan to be supported by Barack Obama and opposed by McCain.
If voters understood the events of the last week, they would probably return control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, to the Republicans. The mainstream media will make sure that doesn’t happen.
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2 comments:
Government, specificially social engineering of the free market, caused this problem. Now, we want to authorize the government to fix the problem?
This bill could be much worse and by the time it is over with today, there could be another $100 billion in earmarks attached.
What gets me is that we reward incompetance and failure by allowing a sector of the economy to have more control. The bad business practices were encouraged by Congress as a means to give guaranteed housing for the poor; houses most of these folks cannot afford.
Since when did the government have to take responsibility to bailout a few homeowners and their lenders for bad business practices and the failure to pay their bills?
Somewhere in heaven, Alexander Hamilton is dancing today as the government is taking over the banking industry. Somewhere in heaven, Aaron Burr is loading his gun again.
"Government, specificially social engineering of the free market, caused this problem. Now, we want to authorize the government to fix the problem?"
Yes. This is no different from Govt meddling that created the S&L crisis and we passed FIRRA and RTC to 'clean up the mess'. We need to educate people on the CRA roots of the crisis and how Govt medding created the subprime lending crisis.
"This bill could be much worse and by the time it is over with today, there could be another $100 billion in earmarks attached."
No, the bill does not have and will not have earmarks. They took out the Democrat stinker provisions. They are saving that for the Continuing Resolution. :-(
"The bad business practices were encouraged by Congress as a means to give guaranteed housing for the poor; houses most of these folks cannot afford."
Yes. But we should have been far more worked up over the Housing Bailout bill earlier this summer then, which does what you say and costs even more than this will likely cost (I am guess a cost of $100-200 billion for this bailout; the $700 billion will be spent on assets which have value and the Govt may make money on some of those assets.)
"Somewhere in heaven, Alexander Hamilton is dancing today as the government is taking over the banking industry. Somewhere in heaven, Aaron Burr is loading his gun again."
Hamilton was a hard money guy. I dont think he'd be thrilled by a Fed that inflated our currency. Aaron Burr was a dangerous demagogue who was willing to topple the govt for power. I'm thinking he'd be in hell and couldnt get to Mr Hamilton! ;-)
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