In a mere five minutes on the floor of the House today, Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur gave a fantastic recap of the Paulson "Wall Street Bailout" plan, and proposed a compelling alternate vision of a "Wall Street Reckoning":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S27yitK32ds
Here's the transcript:http://www.kaptur.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=289&Itemid=1
| THE LATEST REALITY GAME--WALL STREET BAILOUT -- (House of Representatives - September 22, 2008) | | Print | |
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, here is the latest reality game. Let's play Wall Street Bailout.
Rule one: Rush the decision. Time the game to fall in the week before Congress is set to adjourn and just 6 weeks before an historic election so your opponents will be preoccupied, pressured, distracted, and in a hurry.
Rule two: Disarm the public through fear. Warn that the entire global financial system will collapse and the world will fall into another Great Depression. Control the media enough to ensure that the public will not notice this.
Bailout will indebt them for generations, taking from them trillions of dollars they earned and deserve to keep.
Rule three: Control the playing field and set the rules. Hide from the public and most of the Congress just who is arranging this deal. Communicate with the public through leaks to media insiders. Limit any open congressional hearings. Communicate with Congress via private teleconferencing calls. Heighten political anxiety by contacting each political party separately. Treat Members of Congress condescendingly, telling them that the matter is so complex that they must rely on those few insiders who really do know what's going on.
Rule four: Divert attention and keep people confused. Manage the news cycle so Congress and the public have no time to examine who destroyed the prudent banking system that served America so well for 60 years after the financial meltdown of the 1920s.
Rule five: Always keep in mind the goal is to privatize gains to a few and socialize loss to the many. For 30 years in one financial scandal after another, Wall Street game masters have kept billions of dollars of their gain and shifted their losses to American taxpayers. Once this bailout is in place, the greed game will begin again.
But I have a counter-game.
It's called Wall Street Reckoning.
Congress shouldn't go home to campaign. It should put America's accounts in order.
To Wall Street insiders, it says ``no'' on behalf of the American people. You have perpetrated the greatest financial crimes ever on this American republic. You think you can get by with it because you are extraordinarily wealthy and the largest contributors to both Presidential and congressional campaigns in both major parties, but you are about to be brought under firm control.
First, America doesn't need to bail you out, it needs to secure the real assets and property, not your paper, that means the homes and properties of hardworking Americans who are about to lose their homes because of your mortgage greed. There should be a new job for regional Federal Reserve Banks. We want no home foreclosed if a serious work-out agreement can be put into place. And if you don't do it, we want a notarized statement by a Federal Reserve official that they tried and failed.
Second, taxpayers should directly gain any equity benefits that may flow from this historic bailout. We want the American people to get first priority in taking ownership of the institutions that want to pass their toxic paper onto the taxpayers.
Third, before any bailouts for Wall Street, America needs major job creation to rebuild our major infrastructure. America needs assets, not paper. We need working assets.
Fourth, the time for real financial regulatory change is now, not next year. A modernized Glass Eagle Act must be put in place. We need to reestablish locally-owned community savings banks across this country and create within the Justice Department a fully funded unit to prosecute every single high-flying thief whose fraud and criminal acts created this debacle and then forced their disgorgement of assets going back 15 years.
Fifth, any refinancing must return a major share of profits to a new Social Security and Medicare lockbox, where the monies can go to pay for a dignified and assured retirement for every American. This Member isn't voting for a penny of it.
Those who created and profited from this game of games must be brought to justice.
The assets they stole must be returned to the American taxpayers, right down to the tires on their Mercedes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring my bill to create an independent commission to investigate these well-heeled wrongdoers. Real reform now, or nothing.
===
| Facing our Financial Crisis | | Print | |
| Statement on Economic Turmoil | |
The House and Senate should commit to staying in session until we get this right for the American public. There should be no talk about going home to campaign until we straighten out this mess.
My position is that Congress should make it a priority to protect the assets of the American people. We should not be stampeded into taking rash action six weeks before an election. We must insist on due diligence at every step of the process. Thus, we should not approve any bailout without insisting on reforms. This is especially important to those of us who opposed the various pieces of legislation that created this irresponsible, high-risk behavior in the financial markets.
I do not believe that Congress should bail out large financial institutions on Wall Street, especially without adequate protection for the average person. We need to help Main Street, not just Wall Street.
Also, the financial crisis was precipitated by an avalanche of foreclosures. Ohio and Michigan have been especially hard hit by the decline in real estate values. Accordingly, any financial recovery plan must take into account the situations of thousands of families who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.
I do not believe that the people who helped bring about this situation should be allowed to profit from it. Therefore, I will insist on measures that hold responsible anyone whose actions helped bring us to this extraordinary moment where the American people are being called upon to save the financial system.
Read what others are saying about the financial crisis:
- William Greider: “Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle. ”
- Robert Reich: “What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get a Blank Check from Taxpayers .”
- Ann Woolner: “Sue Them, Jail Them, Make Them Pay for Meltdown .”
- Robert Kuttner: “Seven Deadly Sins of Deregulation—and Three Necessary Reforms. ”
- Bob Borosage: "Time for a Citizen's Plan on the Crisis? "
Other comments by Representative Kaptur:
http://www.kaptur.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=290&Itemid=1
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Congress is being pushed to pass a Bush administration plan to write a blank check to white collar criminals of the highest order. Instead of prosecuting those who stole from us, Secretary Paulson wants us to reward his former colleagues for their bad decisions, abusive and unlawful practices.
While my constituents are struggling to pay their gas bills, we should recall fondly the record annual bonuses Secretary Paulson's alma mater, Goldman Sachs, gave less than 2 years ago. In 2006, that investment house alone paid $16.5 billion in compensation to its employees averaging more than $600,000 per employee. In fact, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein got $53.4 million that year. And Bear Stearns chief executive officer, the company that the Fed just bailed out with our money, James E. Cayne, got a stock bonus that year worth $14.8 million. Merrill Lynch chief executive officer Stanley O'Neal, he got $35.4 million. Think about this America.
Now 2 years later, those houses are demanding that our taxpayers bail out their companies, despite the fact that the real median household income of a middle class family in our country is about $50,000 a year. That doesn't matter to the people drafting this bailout.
In 2006, Forbes Magazine estimated Secretary Paulson earned $16.4 million as CEO of Goldman Sachs, not counting all his other perks. His net worth is estimated somewhere over half a billion dollars. Indeed, that tidy amount alone would make a real dent in what is owed to the American people in this proposed bailout.
So why would our middle class taxpayers be asked to bail out billionaires? Some of them should be doing time for insider trading and fraudulent accounting rather than lobbying down here in Washington for us to bail them out.
American taxpayers were forced to lay out $30 billion to help Bear Stearns.
And then we were asked to shell out the first $200 billion, and that could rise to $2.44 trillion, for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And now, $85 billion to rescue AIG Insurance Company.
Who ever heard of the Federal Government rescuing an insurance company that was already paying, get this, civil fines in New York for its wrongdoing of over $1.6 billion on proven charges of serious accounting fraud and misconduct.
Why send our hardened paychecks to the very people who caused these problems?
Americans don't need to write checks. We need investigations, and we don't need just investigations, we need prosecutions. White collar crimes of this magnitude cannot go unpunished, nor can they get rewarded.
First, investigation. We need the American people's voices to be heard, not just the voices of those who perpetrated these crimes against us, the taxpayers. We need real congressional investigation and oversight in each of the committees of jurisdiction which seem strangely silent here, using their subpoena power, the Judiciary Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Budget Committee, the Financial Services Committee, which is having a perfunctory hearing tomorrow, I guess, and Government Oversight. The silence is deadening.
The crimes of Wall Street will make Watergate look like penny-ante thieves.
Second, campaign reform. Get the Wall Street money out of congressional and presidential races. Wall Street is now the Number 1 top source of Federal campaign money to Congress and in those presidential races. And guess who's the Number 1 Wall Street giver? Goldman Sachs. And guess where our last two Treasury Secretaries have come from? Goldman Sachs.
Whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican, not one lawmaker or candidate should be accepting Wall Street money. Wall Street is so broke as to beg for our help, but somehow they have millions of dollars to drop into political coffers.
I think the American people are beginning to get the picture. In fact, I'm putting in the Record tonight an article from the Wall Street Journal called Wall Street Top Source of Campaign Money, and also a list of the biggest donors on Wall Street.
Mr. Speaker, I will continue tomorrow evening to talk about justice and empowering the Department of Justice to institute a major investigation.
And let me also, in closing say, I'm going to be placing in the Record tonight some remarks from Americans who have ideas about what should be done.
I want to compliment the American people. You're doing a lot of thinking on your own. We need to hear from you.
This Congress shouldn't be closing down and going home. We should be
taking care of America's business, not going home to campaign.===
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