Washblog

The 202 switchboard number provided at the top of this story was "iffy".  It took awhile to get through.  Then the operator randomly picked one legislator and connected me with Senator Cantwell's office.  When I called Senator Murray's office, the mailbox was full.

Email was easier.  Murray, Cantwell, and  Reichert have webforms linked to in this diary.  I created my message with text from the Backbone Campaign page:

Dear __:

Any bailout must be run in the public interest with oversight by a range of interests. Congress MUST NOT issue a blank check for Henry Paulson, who as CEO of Goldman Sachs made $46.74 million over 5 years, and had wealth in stock of $632.4 million as of 2006. Congress must not give this man who profited from helping to create this crisis unlimited tax-payer money to save his cronies or his so-called "industry."

by noemie maxwell on Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 11:31:05 AM PST

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http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99842/the_dirty_secret_of_the_bailout_that_no_one_is_talking_abou t

The deal proposed by Paulson is nothing short of outrageous. It includes no oversight of his own closed-door operations. It merely gives congressional blessing and funding to what he has already been doing, ad hoc. He plans to retain Wall Street firms as advisors to decide just how to cut deals to value and mop up Wall Street's dubious paper. There are to be no limits on executive compensation for the firms that get relief, and no equity share for the government in exchange for this massive infusion of capital. Both Obama and McCain have opposed the provision denying any judicial review of decisions made by Paulson -- a provision that evokes the Bush administration's suspension of normal constitutional safeguards in its conduct of foreign policy and national security. (...)

The differences between this proposed bailout and the three closest historical equivalents are immense. When the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s pumped a total of $35 billion into U.S. corporations and financial institutions, there was close government supervision and quid pro quos at every step of the way. Much of the time, the RFC became a preferred shareholder, and often appointed board members. The Home Owners Loan Corporation, which eventually refinanced one in five mortgage loans, did not operate to bail out banks but to save homeowners. And the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s, created to mop up the damage of the first speculative mortgage meltdown, the S&L collapse, did not pump in money to rescue bad investments; it sorted out good assets from bad after the fact, and made sure to purge bad executives as well as bad loans. And all three of these historic cases of public recapitalization were done without suspending judicial review.

by eridani on Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 03:34:37 PM PST

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--for 5 billion, then taxpayers bloody well deserve the same for $700 billion
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080924/goldman_sachs_berkshire.html

One of the world's shrewdest dealmakers is betting $5 billion of his investors' money that the U.S. financial system is not about to collapse. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Tuesday it investing at least $5 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a huge vote of confidence for one of the survivors of the credit crisis that felled two of its investment banking peers.

In addition to buying $5 billion in preferred stock, Berkshire also got warrants to buy another $5 billion in Goldman's common stock. Goldman also said late Tuesday it would raise another $2.5 billion in its own public stock offering.

by eridani on Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 04:04:59 PM PST

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http://truemajority.wiredforchange.com/o/8/t/107/event/search.jsp?distributed_event_KEY=5

by eridani on Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 04:16:21 PM PST

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