The Economy & McCain

[thisficklemob]

I'm no economic expert, but here are some links I've found helpful towards making sense of this bailout thing.

First thing to know is, they are utterly shameless. They wanna take $700 billion of your money, with no controls over what they do with it:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and

Comments

[xiaomi]

I'm not convinced this is a good idea, but that HuffPo article engaged in some tin-foil paranoia. They fundamentally mis-read the act. One example:

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

This section is pretty clear - they can walk into a bank, take it over, and then essentially mandate the employees to carry out various tasks which the government is already authorized to carry out under the Commerce Clause (tasks which will usually relate to shutting down the bank). It's already a power that the FDIC has on a smaller scale. As agents, the bank officials wouldn't have any power - the Treasury would.

[xiaomi]

And not to mention, the mere fact that they call the decisions unreviewable doesn't mean they're unreviewable. That will get challenged and stricken in part under some pretty long-established Administrative law. That's standard language these days, and it's consistently struck down where appropriate. There will be no new legal ground broken here, unlike things like GITMO.

Having said all of that, I agree with about every word Bernie Sanders wrote, but that HuffPo article sounds like it's written by someone who simply has no idea what they're talking about.

[kimbari]

I'm glad you know this. I was close to panic. But then, I AM someone who has no idea what they're talking about.

[xiaomi]

Yeah basically the real question here is whether or not this is a good use of resources and whether or not this constitutes a massive golden parachute for the banks. That's a serious question with serious repercussions - this would be more expensive than the Iraq war. But there's no coup going on here - it may be fraud on a massive scale, but this proposal doesn't challenge the fundamental workings of government

[kimbari]

Thank you. That was so rational! I wish more people talked like you.