Congress should focus on helping homeowners and debtors, not on helping banks.

I hear that the GWBush (as did is father before him) is proposing a Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) solution to the current economic crisis. As usual, he is way off mark. And as usual, the reason is that he is looking at the problem he wants to see and not the problem that exists.

The problem is not the banks. It's not Wall Street. The problem is that American workers are hurting.

It is not entirely palpable yet, but the number of homeless, jobless and underpaid Americans is rapidly increasing and, if the government continues to focus on the problems of Wall Street and not on the problems of Main Street, this trend will accelerate.

Big business has been unwilling and unable to do anything about joblessness, homelessness or low wages since the end of the Viet Nam War. Giving money to big business has not worked. And if tried again, it will merely divert resources that are needed to help people.

If given hand-outs, big business will spend them on job and housing development in India and China. It is a shocking disgrace that the American Congress -- with its supposed Democratic majority, would even think of underwriting the very companies that refuse to pay their share of American taxes, and that have financed the exodus of American jobs and American prosperity to the so-called third world with American tax revenue.

Congress has shown itself to be too chicken to end the war, to impeach the president or to do much of anything that needed to be done in the past two years. It had better get some backbone now.

This is Congress's last chance. This is America's last chance. If Congress bails out another bank without strict conditions requiring investment of the bail-out money in jobs and low-income housing (low including our many homeless) here in the U.S., it deserves what it will get in the coming years -- a housing and jobs crisis of overwhelming magnitude. (After all, in the end, the job of housing the homeless and providing jobs will fall on the American government. It's just a matter of the numbers of homeless. When it gets high enough, government assistance will have to be provided.)

If Congress does not respond with real solutions AIMED TO LIFT UP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, not the international financial moguls, a lot of Congressfolks will find themselves jobless along with the rest of us before long.

Congress needs to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and Sallie Mae) to give subsidies to American debtors (not the banks who are the creditors) who are in financial jeopardy. It needs to hold emergency sessions to amend the Bankruptcy laws to allow courts to promote workouts on mortgages and other loans (not restructure them at the mercy of the lenders, not send debtors to "debt advisers" who have no authority with creditors and no solutions). The prime rate is what 2%? So why are credit card debtors being charged 27%? Maybe if the banks charged 8%, the debtors could pay their cards off. So, how about enacting federal usury laws?

Congress also needs to increase Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled who are facing inflation, increasing health care costs and who are too proud or too timid to say anything about it.

If the liquidity is placed in the pockets of the debtors, the creditors will be rescued in the process. Liquidity given to creditors gets exported. In exchange for the subsidies to banks, the banks should be required to forgive or restructure the loans of ordinary Americans.

Congress also needs to to get Americans back to work at decent jobs. Investing directly in emerging energy technologies would be a good start. Congress also needs to focus on making education better, healthcare affordable to all and generally building up THE AMERICAN economy.

The markets will rebound when Congress and the president stop wasting our money on military expeditions to Tim-Buk-Tu and on bail-outs for wealthy institutions whose managers are playing the markets and laughing as they unfold their parachutes on the way out.

These bail-outs including the idea of resurrecting the Resolution Trust Corporation are yet another swerve in the wrong direction. Focus on your job, Congress. Focus on your constituents. If we ordinary Americans are doing well, Wall Street will also do well.

from conservative religious republicans in power.
It will never come to pass. They have no interest in the working people, or the wellbeing of the US in general.


mark

allow themselves to be waylaid by Republicans.

A lot of the overextended people out there are Republican voters. I suspect that more of them are Republican than Democratic.

the market needs to be stabilized... and we need a bottom up economic recovery system