$700 Billion or $7 Trillion: It Makes No Difference
That’s right, I said it. It doesn’t matter how much money Mr. Paulson, Mr. Bernanke, President Stupid or every member of Congress approves to fill the greed bucket of Wall Street.
There is a crisis for sure, and no amount of money will remedy this’¦ it is a crisis of in confidence.
How does one restore confidence you ask? By making tough choices, and then following through with them. What are the tough choices that need to be made right now? Here are a few suggestions:
1. The Proposed RTC’esq structure which would oversee the purchase of all the bad assets be allowed to be traded as a publically traded government insured entity. That would allow the American public an opportunity to [purchase ‘œbad assets’ on the cheap like the private equity funds that will when this entity finally takes shape.
2. Cut government spending now! Put a hiring freeze on all government jobs and then cut the expenses of every government department by 10% immediately.
3. Offer early retirement packages to any government employee who has 20 years service.
4. No more deficit spending in future budgets. Its pay as you go.
5. Give the president the line item veto
6. No more ‘œextras’ / ‘œriders’ salted pork attached to any pieces of legislation.
7. Term limits for all members of Congress ‘“ 3 terms for Congressmen, 2 terms for Senators
These are just a few ideas for starters’¦ I can come up with more.
And you’re not going to like what I have to say next. This current crisis is probably worse than the crash of 1929. Why? Because there are no true leaders / visionaries with the skills and courage to lead the world out of this mess. I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I don’t think – as much as I like him as a person – he has the overall juice that it will take to lessen the impact that is yet to come from this catastrophe.
Get your helmets on folks’¦ this is no practice drill!
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Walter Schubert, a third generation member of the New York Stock Exchange is the Founder and CEO of GFN.com: The Gay Financial Network.
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
Wow.
It’s political ideology like this that got us into this mess to begin with.
Why should other government programs suffer because Wall Street bigwigs were deregulated to the point that they had no one to answer to? Cut programs by 10% in order to pay off the mistakes of the Free Market? No thanks.
How on earth would term limits help this problem? I understand the argument, Congressmembers are in the pocket of whozit or whatzit so term limits would alleviate the croneyism. Nevermind the so-called democracy we live in. What has it done for us lately?
I won’t even get into the ageist ramifications of forcing people into retirement. This comment is too far gone to warrant legitimate consideration.
Very interesting post… I agree very much with your suggestions. These are good suggestions. Many of which I support. Unfortuntaly, many of these suggestions have been shot down at one point or another over the years by members of Congress. Some of whom are STILL there.. ON BOTH SIDES mind you.
I am not sure who I am going to vote for yet. I wont vote for either major canidates. I cant vote for someone who has no experience in anything. In addition, I can not vote for someone who could not get a security clearnance if he applied for the FBI. So, Obama is off my list. I can’t vote for someone who is very similiar to the current President. For we need leadership this time around. So, McCain is out as well.
So, this gay man in PHX will probably just vote for the local races…….
Walter, at least you have the balls to say something specific. I was really frustrated by last night’s debate, as well as the one from 2 weeks ago, because neither Obama or McCain would offer any specifics about how they would get the economy back on track.