Wall Street Bailout: Necessarily Outrageous?

Nobody anywhere seems to know the answer. Politicians, economic experts, and people of all backgrounds across the country have been formulating opinions without legitimate reasoning. I have sifted through newpapers, blogs, radio, television and my own economic professors desperate for definitive answers. My search has been met with nothing but ambiguous claims that have NO tangible, factual foundation to rest on!

What if we didn't bail out anybody? Some folks, like Newt Gingrich, Ralph Nader and Dean Baker, say (in interviews and articles) that the bailout is misguided and the popular threat of a Great Depression is empty. Rather, as Baker posits, "There is no way that the failure to do a bailout will lead to more than a very brief failure of the financial system. We will not lose our modern system of payments."

Other folks, particularly Barack Obama, John McCain, and Treasurer Henry Paulson are strong advocates of the bailout and made many personal calls to congressional leaders to push the bailout bill through. They all provide the same compelling but vague argument that we better bite the bullet and do this... Or else!

Or else what? We're all going to be lining up for soup next week? Nobody really knows how bad things could get or what really would happen if we let the market system take its course rather than socializing the biggest insurance firm in the world, among other large corporations.

I'm not arguing that we should not bail out Wall Street. I am simply upset that our two presidential candidates and the rest of our governmental leadership have been so hasty in their decision to do so. They are showing an astonishing level of imprudence in their response to a crisis that was caused by precisely that; imprudence (on the part of home buyers, creditors and investors).

I am as interested and concerned as you are to see what will happen next in this rigorous test of modern capitalism. I believe that consumer and business confidence in our financial system will be a deciding factor in how bad this crisis really gets. And I can only hope that our next President, Congress, and the Federal Reserve move away from their initial approach (panic) and take a more wise and thoughtful stance with regard to this dilemma of unknown proportions.


Newt Gingrich Interview Transcript

Ralph Nader Interview Transcript