From James Moore’s A Nation of Village Idiots: “Let’s just consider the money. The public bailout of insurance giant (becoming a dwarf) AIG is estimated at $85 billion. According to one report, that’s more than the Bush administration spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children during his entire time in office. That amount of money would also pay for health care for every man, woman, and child in America for at least six months. How did we get here?”
Now Hearing- Lauryn Hill – Intro
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7 Comments
I thought Obama was for the bail out and McCain was against it?
Sorry it was not the AIG bail out it was the taking of a trillion dollars of bad debt from the banks.
You do realize that if AIG went we would end up in a world wide depression right?
Did you read the article? It’s not saying that we shouldn’t have bailed out AIG. It’s saying that Sen. Gramm (the person who wrote McCain’s economic plan and the man rumored to be in line for the top spot at the Treasury Department) was directly responsible for what’s happening right now on Wall Street. It was his bill (supported by McCain and all the other Republicans) that allowed this mess to happen.
Then it goes further, connecting what’s happening now to what happend with S&L’s in the eighties, when McCain was embroiled in the Keating Five scandal.
The point is not that we shouldn’t have bailed out AIG. It’ that we HAVE to bail out AIG because these guys all screwed up.
And now they want four more years.
Did you not rad the sorry part of my post?
I did, but then your next line made it seem like you thought someone was arguing against the AIG thing, so…
I just wanted to make sure everyone understood that it was needed.
But let us break down what this guy is saying.
“Taxpayers didn’t get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures.”
Really? How many taxpayers made money on selling of or on the increase in equity on their homes during this mess? How many billions of dollars got funneled into the system from this bubble? It was not just the top people who made money on this there is a giant list of people from the construction industry, to the service industry, ect all the way down the line to the guy who gets the carts at home depot.
He mentions the 85 billion but I am curious why he did not go into what the bail out actually is. Is it really 85 billion in cash? Or is it something else. I am not sure I wish he went into it deeper.
We understand that this is a mess and will end up costing people money, but I am curious if that bill that is the root cause of this has actually helped the economy before this mess. Or is it all bad. Again I am not sure but I wish that maybe I could get some more information to make an informed opinion about it.
Thirdly if McCain has not said he will appoint this guy as the treasury sec. that I am aware of so I will wait for him to do it before I disapprove of it.
Also I would just like to point out that Clinton signed that bill so would it be more like 12 more years?