What do you think about the $700 billion Wall Street bail-out?

We don't pretend to have the national financial crisis all figured out, but we know that members are talking about it.  Central Kentucky member Danny Cotton vents his frustration with it on Facebook, wondering at "bailouts that include checks with more zeroes than I ever seen," and, in offering an idea for a solution, challenging the thick CEO paychecks (which the proposed bail out plan doesn't seem to challenge at all).  Other members are also sending around resources, thoughts, and snippets of conversations, all drawing out the themes that resonate with our work:  wealth inequality, the stunning ability of our political leaders to work together to help the powerful and the wealthy, the lack of strong government regulation of a very powerful interest group, and the familiar position of funding dubious investments that seem to benefit corporations over families. 

We hope you'll share your thoughts, questions, and frustrations here, where we can all help each other figure it out! 

There are oodles of resources, articles, and interviews out there.  Many of them claim to help us understand the crisis, and about as many focus on different aspects of the crisis!  Still, here are some that KFTC members have found helpful:

• NPR's Planet Money has a collection of interviews and snippets from other sites that, collectively, flesh out a story of how the crisis came to be, and how Congress is (and should) navigate the bail-out. 
  


• $700 billion is a *lot* of money.  An interesting column in Forbes offers "Seven Better Uses For $700 Billion."  Some of their ideas? 
  








• Invest it in our infrastructure, building safe bridges and large-scale public transportation projects. 
  




• Invest in solar energy projects, and when we start earning a return on that investment, invest in other clean energy projects. 
  




• Invest in health care!  Give people access to health care (fair warning...they're not talking about single-payer, but it's still worth reading), and invest in finding and giving people access to cures for our most overwhelming ailments.  The article points out that the National Cancer Institute gets $5 billion a year in funding.  Could it do more with more than 100 times that amount?

• A column from NY Times  columnist Bob Herbert.  Herbert asks, "Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?  How about a second opinion?"  Herbert's article questions Henry Paulson's rush and urges the exploration of solutions that work for regular people (or at least that don't inspire Wall Streeters to jump up and down in ecstasy).  (Herbert points out that Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, "was telling us during the summer that the economy was sound, that its long-term fundamentals were 'strong,' that growth would rebound by the end of the year, when most of the slump in housing prices would be over.")


• "Crash Course in Economics," a column by Larry Beinhart.  (Beinhart wrote Wag the Dog, by the way, and has a bunch of other impressive creds.)  This very accessible, non-jargony column challenges some of the narrow finger-pointing,broadening the context for why we're in this mess (including the Bush tax cuts for the super wealthy, the war, artificially low wages, and global free trade), and proposing a set of solutions that restore a functioning government for the people.


• Alternet.org also has a collection of helpful articles.  Look around, but maybe start with "10 Things You Should Know about Bush's Trillion Dollar Fleecing Plan," a collection of themes that are surfacing from the critics, and links to fuller articles and explanations. 
  

If  you have other suggestions, feel free to post them in a comment!  And even if you don't dip in to any of these, let others know what you think about bailing out Wall Street!