The following is a selection of recent letters sent to the World Socialist Web Site on the US financial crisis and the Wall Street bailout.
Good luck with all your good works and words. Last night I was teaching/exploring Thomas More’s Utopia in class, and even before I got going one student asked about the $700 billion bailout, its implications. It’s amazing how relevant More’s piece is—abolish private property, “conspiracy of the rich,” etc.—how it dovetails with current events.
The historical moment is at hand, and the SEP, I believe, has a chance to seize it. It is so well positioned because of all your good work.
RM
24 September 2008
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I’m a 77-year-old woman living in Arkansas at the moment and a couple of weeks ago I forecast the meltdown of the financial institutions. I was thinking it would happen any day. Then along comes Paulson and announces to Congress that a meltdown was imminent and reportedly the legislators all sat there in stunned silence. Surprise, surprise!! They had no idea things were so bad. Why didn’t they realize what was happening? I’m no oracle; yet I knew. All you had to do is put two and two together.
I now have a feeling that Social Security is bankrupt and there’s not a buck in it to back up my monthly check. Also, there’s not a buck in FDIC either, and all these soothing words telling citizens that their money is insured for $100,000 are a big fat lie.
I have a feeling the super-rich are going to flee the country with assets provided by the trillion-dollar bailout. The sense of urgency constantly invoked by Bush, Paulson and Bernanke, and their gray, panicky faces, indicate the situation is irreversible and capitalism is on the verge of collapse. But what do I know?
I think I’ll buy a tent (they happen to be on sale now) and a sleeping bag. I lived through the first Great Depression, and I think I’m about to witness something even worse.
SC
Searcy, Arkansas
22 September 2008
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The WSWS has met the capitalist plan to make Henry Paulson the world’s undisputed financial czar with an accurate prediction of what the world and the USA face if Paulson is given the power he seeks. Your coverage on September 23 is a tour de force of exposition and advocacy. WSWS has given the world warning of what is to come when Czar Henry Paulson is seated as the world’s economic czar. Ultimate power goes to those who control the money. Czar Paulson will be a cruel autocrat. No one will dare oppose Czar Paulson. Paulson will surpass Stalin in cruelty.
LL
23 September 2008
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I am sick! What can we do? The French Revolution sounds like a solution.
JP
23 September 2008
On “Paulson warns: No limits on CEO pay”
Don’t bail them out, buy them out. What will it cost to buy a business that is in a negative equity position? We the taxpayers are going to be stuck with the bad debts anyway. Might just as well have total control; then the CEOs work for us directly.
DM
23 September 2008
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When Paulson says the banks won’t participate if executives’ pay is limited, then let them go down, I say. Fox News just said the FBI is investigating Lehmans, AIG, Fannie and Freddie. Do you think the investigation will be dragged out till at least the election is over? I expect as much.
AC
Calgary, Canada
23 September 2008
On “Obama demands deep cutbacks to pay for Wall Street bailout”
What a despicable creep this candidate for “change” is turning out to be! Like the Clinton era, it will be more of the same, if he gets in. It certainly looks like his association with the practices of the corrupt Illinois Democratic Party Machine are now finally emerging for all to see clearly. Since emerging as the favorite “Native Son” he has done nothing to criticize the fiscal mismanagement of his home state that will be indebted to the present Democratic governor in more than ways. As a protégé of Emil Jones, who did his utmost to block a “recall” motion against this governor several months ago. His true colors are now appearing neither Republican Red nor Democratic Blue but Wall Street Green!
TW
Illinois
23 September 2008
On “Banks race to profit from US bailout”
Excellent analysis. It really seems like the government has opened the gates of hell wide open, and it’s scary to think of what’s going to come out.
Thanks again,
OC
23 September 2008
Henry Paulson and his colleagues are exactly the people one reads about when any article about Chavez is printed. These are the people who cannot bear to see money going to the working class or money used for bridges, mass transit, public health, disaster recovery or anything else that might benefit the common folk. These sorts of people are also the ones who spend nights awake thinking about what kind of hotel they’ll build on the public beaches confiscated from the Cuban people. In short, they are pigs sleeping in the farmer’s bed.
PK
24 September 2008
On “Democrats signal support for Wall Street bailout at Senate hearing”
Why isn’t anyone calling for a resignation of Bush and Cheney over this?
GH
Mesa, Arizona, USA
24 September 2008
On “US government to bail out Wall Street”
If the ratio of the initial cost estimates by the same corporate/political liars about the Iraq war compared to its actual final cost is applied to Paulson’s vague suggestion of “not more than $700 billion” for the Wall Street ‘bailout’, then the best estimate would be, as kids used to say, “all the money in China.”
Disgorgement of stolen money is not expropriation.
AM
Sanford, Maine, USA
20 September 2008
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So we have come full circle. We are back at the ’80s with Mike Milken the Junk Bond King; to be more precise 1984 by 1986, with the squealing of Ivan Boesky when the whole shebang of junk bond trading met its demise. In 1988 both Milken and Drexel Burnham were charged with securities fraud. Drexel reached a settlement with the government later that year, agreeing to pay $650 million in fines. Milken pled guilty to six counts of securities fraud. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, ordered to pay fines totaling $600 million, and permanently barred from engaging in the securities business. Soon afterward the junk-bond market collapsed, leading to Drexel Burnham’s bankruptcy in 1990.
Come the Bush 21st century, and the 2008 worldwide financial debacle originating in the US, and what Milken started and was put in jail for all of a sudden has become the Washington fascist clique’s approved way of doing business in the banking environment.
Mike Milken has been reerected in the form of the Federal Reserve (the bank owned by the major banks). Now all a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, i.e., Ford, has to do is set its in-house printing press rolling printing junk paper, and bring it to the bank, which will give it money as a loan. The bank takes the junk paper to the Fed, tells the Fed it cannot sell this paper, and the Fed will give the bank the money and the Fed stores the junk paper in Fort Knox. If you do not remember Ford Knox, it is the place where the gold was stored when the US had real money. Marvelous, isn’t it, where everything has come to, including Bush’s self-pardon for all crimes committed by him and his fascist clique cronies.
FBR
Thailand
20 September 2008
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Here is the letter to the editor I sent my local paper (Waterville, Maine’s Morning Sentinel) this morning:
Dear Editor,
How come it’s okay for the poor and working poor to suffer under a free-market system, but the wealthy get bailed out by the taxpayers? Congress should stop pretending to believe in a “free market” and do its job: regulate economic sectors on behalf of the people. Failure to do this is leading us toward great social instability. What do regular working class people have at stake in keeping the current system afloat? They lack health coverage. Their children attend substandard public schools which deliver them into the hands of military recruiters. They can barely pay taxes, keep food on the table, and a roof over their heads—never mind retiring after decades of work.
False divisions among us are nurtured by the mainstream media: it’s a race thing, or people don’t like a candidate because she’s a woman. They don’t want us to notice the real divide between people who work for a living, and people who live off the work others do. Which of these groups controls our government? I think we all know the answer to that.
Here’s a simple idea to help the economy: let’s stop bombing civilians. This will free up funds which can be used to build public transportation so people can get to work. Working people around the globe have far more in common than they realize.
LS
Solon, Maine, USA
22 September 2008
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It’s a joke, isn’t it? Boy oh boy, if this bailout doesn’t reveal the utter corruption at the very core of America, nothing does. Congress and the People have no say whatsoever. The elite are not about to give up their billion-dollar paydays, thank you very much John Q. Taxpayer, schmuck extraordinaire. The USA, already morally bankrupt with our wars of mass murder, bombing of civilians, and secret-prison torturing of suspects, is now so in-the-hole and financially bankrupt it’s not even funny. Yet as long as there’s another trillion we can wring out of the Chinese and our unborn grandchildren, we’ll borrow it, to fund the American lifestyle of unbridled greed and consumption. Meanwhile, there’s hardly a peep of outrage in this country, because of course the public has become so stupefied by happy-talk and the lack of any real information in the American mainstream corporate media that people have no idea how they are about to be raped by this obscene giveaway. I’m even surprised Bush and Paulson didn’t get the media to call it “the financial surge” instead of “Wall Street bailout.”
Thanks as always to the WSWS for reportage that’s pure oxygen. They’ll have to pry your web site out of my cold dead hands.
TH
22 September 2008