What is your opinion of the Geithner plan?

[ColbertWatcher]

Poll question: What is your opinion of the Geithner plan?

[Cleita]

1. When you are done with this poll, send a link of the thread to the White

House. He needs to know what we are thinking.

[ColbertWatcher]

10. I won't send it if it has fewer than 100 votes on it. n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

15. Kick. n/t

[lamp_shade]

2. There are dozens of Krugmans and Galbraiths on this planet, each with their own pet solution.

I'll go with the one Obama judged to be the best for the crisis at hand.

[BuyingThyme]

3. I don't know.

[Fresh_Start]

4. I don't know and I don't think any of the individuals named above

know what the solution is either.

We are in unprecedented territory.
There is no proven solution for the entire suite of problems at hand.
Everyone is guessing what is the best way to solve the current set of problems.
They place different importance on the various components of the problem and the solution.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. It Is A Total Experiment From The Same People As Financial Deregulation, ...

and almost-free trade with China. I have no reason to expect the outcome of their new adventure will be any different than the outcomes of their previous experiments.

Nationalization of insolvent banks has worked every time it's been tried - the Great Depression, Sweden, the S&L catastrophe, etc.

[Warpy]

6. Obviously something better needs to be done

but it's human nature to want to paste a bad system together rather than scrap it and build a better system from the ground up, which is what needs to be done.

Undoubtedly all repairs will fail and eventually they'll have to do what they should have done in the beginning. History tells us that much.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. As a strategy to bankrupt the country it's very workable.

Printing money to give to the bankers who engineered the mess ain't gonna turn out well.

[CoffeeCat]

8. What bothers me the most about this whole thing...

...is that once again, middle-class America is not being served. The uber-elites on Wall Street are.

And when I say "middle class" I'm talking about households making less than 250k per year.

The concerns and suffering of households that are not in the top 1 percent--are not being addressed by Geithner's bailout.

Are any of you hanging on by your fingernails, because of the "credit freeze"? Any of you doing fine
except for that $500,000 business loan you just can't get or that $100,000 personal loan that you
just can't secure right now?

This is absurd.

Middle-class Americans need jobs. They need job security. They need wages that allow them to live
a decent life. The lack of these things is what is causing pain for the middle class right now. The
lack of these things is causing Americans to hoard pennies and to buy only necessities.

This bailout is for the banks. This bailout serves big corporations and Wall Street. It is a gift
that wipes out the toxic assets--that these very institutions CREATED and then MADE TRILLIONS OF
DOLLARS FROM!

This bailout is a colossal mulligan for the top one percent and it fails to directly address the needs,
wants and suffering of the rest of this country--in this economic downturn.

And if these banks buy these toxic assets from each other--at inflated prices--they will make a killing.
And it will be on our dime. And we will see NO BENEFIT.

Are we done being bamboozled and screwed yet?

[TBF]

12. I sense a pattern (re the "middle class" being screwed)...

... in fact I'm not sure we even have a middle class anymore. Looks like rich v. poor to me. Guess who Geithner works for.

[MadBadger]

9. I chose, "I'm not anywhere close to being an Economist, so I have no Fucking clue."

[ihavenobias]

11. I choose that I defer to award winning economists who *do* have more than a clue.

:)

That's an appeal to authority, but *not* an appeal to a false authority. That doesn't mean they're necessarily right, but just like with Global warming, I'll side with the consensus of the experts, especially progressives who generally have no hidden agenda to Bush the Obama administration.

EDIT: I could correct the "Bush" to bash, but it's funnier this way.

[Mike 03]

13. I don't know anymore.

I thought he and Bernanke were on the right course, but now Krugman and Reich are saying "No," and I respect the hell out of all four of these guys.

I'm totally confused.

I'm not sure what Geithner is supposed to do. I guess he needs to call Batman or something.

[ColbertWatcher]

14. I'm hoping that by hiring all these former Goldman Sachs guys ...

... Obama can hold them accountable for something.

As far as what will/can be done, I'm starting to wonder if nationalization might not be the solution that dare not speak its name.