Don't get while so many support bailing out Wall Street

to the tune of $700 billion, when much of those loses were caused by greed/fraud/hedging/leveraging/shorting ... yet, find it distasteful to save an American institution and 4 million jobs for a mere $25b.

Especially given the fact we're spending $12b PER MONTH!!!! in Iraq .... while they sit on a huge surplus - spending nothing.

But to a government that is not only broke, but that is being made to be further in the hole by Bush's last minute work, it is a lot. The bailout happened because it was literally the last stop before a depression the equivalent of chemotherapy being given to a cancer patient that spent years refusing much better treatments. Even Brazil and Europe demanded it. However, this bailout might very well serve as exactly the cover GM and Ford need to finance their golden parachutes, hide the assets, and kill the unions once and for all. That is why we want them to commit to something, because we know that the GOP is already paving the way for them to do just the sort of con job we know they are capable of, you might as well make it their 2012 platform.

Including me. It averted nothing, except the canceling of posh executive retreats and bank mergers.

Those who did and still do support it just happen to be a vocal minority. They're well-represented in Washington and will continue to be.

On this side of things, however, we do not have a time machine to see the world without it. When even Lula's brazil demands the bailout (which was payment of foreign debt) it goes beyond simple smash and grab. granted, i am thankful that Paulson will NOT be the one in charge of that money.

Because there were no conditions, no oversight, no transparency, and no guarantee that American taxpayers would see their very generous loan to the fraudsters in the financial sector repaid.

There were better ways to do it. That those better ways weren't enacted reflects precisely on how much good has come from it.

"Because there were no conditions, no oversight, no transparency, and no guarantee that American taxpayers would see their very generous loan to the fraudsters in the financial sector repaid."

Ah, exactly the things that Reid and Pelosi are being yelled at for demanding.

And they're right to do so. The only ones yelling at them for demanding these things are BushCo and like-minded twits.

They should have done the same when handing out our $700bn.

Not quite, a lot of democrats are ready to hang Obama if he somehow does not ram this through, even though he is not even a friggin Senator at the moment.

You said "Ah, exactly the things that Reid and Pelosi are being yelled at for demanding."

And I said they're right to be demanding what they are from the Big 3.

Obama is obviously in no position to ram through anything.

So what's your point? Do you even have one?

constituencies but not taking care of their own?

All I'll say is they got what they wanted from us -- our votes. Now they'll return to regular programming.

Sadly, if the banks fell through, nobody would be able to buy ANYTHING. What good would it have been to keep jobs going if, because the banks went belly up, their paychecks might as well be Confederate Currency? Sadly, thanks to the Bushes, the Banks were in a position where if they fell, EVERYBODY, left, right, poor, North, South, East, West, even the lower upper class, would have gotten washed away with the tide. Granted, am i glad Hank Paulson will not be the one running this, YES. I myself want to see AIG gutted and turned into the shell for national health insurance, which would mean that everybody bu the execs could keep their jobs, but frankly as much as we wanted to ignore the banks, we could not, because all our paychecks would be flushed, which of course, the GOP would have no real problem with.

The car companies are different because we know that these execs can easily chew through endless amounts of money. We could offer Ford and GM a trillion dollars, and they could find a way to somehow lose it, and then, with precision, go right back to their plan, which is to declare bankruptcy. It's one thing to give money to people who do not want to fail, it's another when failure is exactly the goal, why, because those bankruptcy proceedings are the only weapon they have that has a shot of killing the UAW. Do you honestly think that they are not planning right now how to use this money to get rid of the UAW right now? Money buys them time, time to buy golden parachutes, which is all that money will buy. Do not get me wrong, I know the bailout will pass, and I know that these companies will still go belly up, because they want to. It is an act of economic suicide bombing, and just like our imperial misadventure in the Mid east is shown, you cannot frighten the suicide bombers with fear of death. We need to have iron bonds put upon these execs, as well as upping Cafe standards. Our only hope of stopping them from dropping the bankruptcy bomb is to put enough stick and carrots into this bill that they will put it off for a bit, just in time for Obama to actually become president.

for the tax payers, but perhaps worse for auto industry, auto workers and our economy.

The only way to save auto workers' jobs in the long run is to link the loans to fundamental changes in the way that management has run the industry into the ground. To just loan them free money because we are in a panic or because we loaned even more to someone else and we should now be "fair" is to ensure that nothing changes and the Big 3 will be back for more in a few months at the rate they are losing money.

I would no more loan "free money" to the auto executives than I would to a drug addict just to make myself feel like I have done something about his financial crisis. All I would be doing is prolonging the problem and making any solution that much more expensive.