Bernie Sanders,R Scheer, Dean Baker on Democracy Now!

more: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/22/sen_bernie_sanders_robert_scheer_and

EXCERPT:

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’ll be joined by one of the senators who will be voting on the legislation, the Independent senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders. But we turn now to two other guests.


Dean Baker is an economist and co-director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, frequent contributor and columnist. His blog is Beat the Press. He’s the author of several books, including The United States Since 1980 and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He joins us from Washington, D.C.


And we’re joined by Robert Scheer in Los Angeles, California, veteran journalist, syndicated columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, editor of the political website, Truthdig. He is the author of several books, most recently The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.


Dean Baker, let’s start with you. Explain the legislation that is being introduced.


DEAN BAKER: Well, essentially, what the President has asked for is a $700 billion blank check. He wants Congress to hand over $700 billion to Henry Paulson to use to buy, you know, bad originally mortgage-backed securities. There’s apparently an effort by the financial community to broaden that, but basically he would have a blank check to bail out Wall Street.


And let me just make one point that everyone should be very, very clear on. This was not an accident, in the sense that this is like a hurricane. This was a totally predictable event. So when President Bush or Henry Paulson say, you know, we have to come to the rescue, it is because of their incompetence, because people who understood the economy—and putting myself among those, but there are others—we were warning about this a long, long time ago. This was a totally predictable event that brought us here.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dean Baker, in terms of the—what it would cover, even the White House apparently keeps changing it. By late Saturday night, they were talking also about the possibility of bailing out foreign banks that had invested in instruments in the United States, as well as moving beyond just securities backed by home mortgage loans, but also to other types of debt, as well.


DEAN BAKER: Absolutely, and this speaks to the nature of the bailout. The bailout should not be fun, if it’s constructed right. The way this should be constructed is, if you’re on the edge of bankruptcy, you come to the Treasury, and you get the money. But guess what? You’re selling your company, and you also have serious limits on CEO pay. You know, you only get $2 million a year; how’s that? Or maybe less. You know, some people have proposed less than that. But the bailout has to be punitive, if it’s serious. It shouldn’t be a field day. We shouldn’t have people lining up to get in.