Public anger builds over Wall St. bailout talks
As politicians, financiers haggle, readers register fear, confusion, distrust

Some 300 protesters lashed out against a proposed $700 billion government bailout of the financial sector on Thursday. Demonstrators on on Wall Street in New York chanted: "You broke it, you bought it," and "bail me out, too!"

As politicians and business leaders struggle to reach a deal on a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, anger is reaching the boiling point on Main Street if readers’ e-mails to msnbc.com are any indication.

In less than 48 hours, nearly 2,000 readers filled out and submitted their view of the bailout and the U.S. economy in general in response to a Gut Check America appeal asking them to vote on their top economic concern and describe how it is affecting their lives.

Many readers expressed fears over the immediate, tangible fallout from the financial crisis, including lost homes, plummeting 401(k) values and inflation.
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But the overriding message was one of righteous indignation from those who see the American dream receding.

“I have had to pull from my 401(k) to make ends meet,” wrote one reader, Anita Vasquez of Albuquerque, N.M., who was laid off a year ago and ended up taking a job for half the pay. The idea of the massive “payoff” to Wall Street makes the 54-year-old apoplectic, or, as she put it, “pissed off in New Mexico!”

Similar messages came from all corners of the country.

“I am 70 years old and still working because I cannot afford not to,” said Patricia Lacroix of Methuen, Mass. “Because of greed and corruption, it has come to this. … Help the middle class now!”

“My greatest concern is being able to send my 16-year-old son to college,” wrote another reader, Angela Cilluffa of Covington, La. “I have started to research scholarships, grants and loans, but I am afraid they will not come through. My son works very hard in school and is doing very well. He deserves every opportunity.”

‘What's next?'
Disbelief and despair also were prominent in many responses.

“My 401(k) has lost 20 percent of its value in two weeks,” wrote Paul Frongillo of Carver, Mass. “What’s next?”

Other readers said they are anxious because they don’t know what is in the financial rescue package that Congress is working on and whether it will help everyday Americans as well.

Kate Keim of Harrisonburg, Va., said she was wondering whether “or how the bailout is really helping the people more than hurting us. The word ‘bailout’ sounds as if the bad guys are getting a pass. Are they? I honestly don't know.”

Charleen Spalding, of Helena, Mont., posed a similar question. “Will this stop the bleeding?” she wrote. “Who will get bailed out next?”

The fact that the horse trading on the financial rescue is going on behind closed doors is not unusual, but the lack of transparency on such far-reaching and costly legislation appeared to be fueling distrust.

Some readers are suspicious
“We are not being given the full picture, and that is what is scary,” said Richard Jurado, of Lake Saint Louis, Mo. He said the market alone should decide the fate of the financial giants.

“Who was managing the books?” he asked. “Why wait until the last minute to bring this problem to the forefront? It almost appears as if they knew that the government would bail them out.”

To Jurado, it would be better to just let the chips fall. “The government will eventually run everything if we do not stand up for capitalism and free enterprise,” he says.

Another theme that emerges from reader responses is the sense that the United States is overextended.

Bill Demars of Burton, Mich., who signed himself “Fed Up,” wrote that what he found most alarming is “the fact that the U.S. is spending so much money on bailouts that the government isn’t even thinking about the amount we are spending on aid for other countries and wars. … The government of the United States needs to take care of the U.S. first.”

‘We ... deserve better’
Dwaine Pope of Longview, Texas, said he is more concerned that the people involved in forging the solution are not up to the job and are too partisan too be trusted.

“The political structure of the U.S. government is too divided to provide an unselfish solution to the economic crisis,” he wrote. “(The parties) have a Hatfield vs. McCoy mentality. We need a true ‘non-partisan,’ ‘non-political’ group of citizens to find a cure.”

In closing, he sounded another theme that surfaced in many responses: “We are honest, hard working people and deserve better,” he wrote.

Readers cry foul over bailout talks - Stocks economy - MSNBC.com

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Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Ernest Benn

I hope public anger continues to build. If it doesn't, this bailout will go through. Although I am pleasantly surprised that it was the Republicans who stopped it from going through this week, I don't know whether they did it because they are truly against it, or if they are just doing it to look good while delaying action until after the upcoming elections, when they'll approve it. My money is on the latter but I hope I'm wrong.

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Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

There is a block of actual fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party in Congress who oppose this as well as past reckless spending. One of my U.S. Senators, Jim DeMint, is one of them, as well as a few others like Congressmen Jeff Flake of Arizona and Ron Paul of Texas. Unfortunately, they are a small minority and the neocons still outnumber them.

Opposing the bailout could indeed just be a political ploy.

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Carolina Politics Online

Sam

The Raw Story | Kucinich says bailout doesn't have the votes

As the Wall Street bailout talks continue, a critical Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is not confident that House will pass the legislation, as he told The Hill. "If the votes were there, this would be on the floor," he said. "The votes aren't there."

Kucinich has been dead wrong before but at least he gives me some hope...

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I'm Proud I never Voted For Bush!



PAT PAULSEN FOR PRESIDENT

Political Punch

I'm told by someone in the room that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and an admired conservative within his caucus, just made what I'm told was a credible argument FOR the bill.

Yes, conservatives are pure...wink wink!

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I'm Proud I never Voted For Bush!



PAT PAULSEN FOR PRESIDENT

I have very mixed feelings about the bailout. My gut says not to do it, but logically it seems like we have to try something.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why? Why do you wish to reward fraud? Why do you wish to reward maladministration? Why do you wish to reward bad investment?

Let the milti-national banks fail.

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The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederick Bastiat

The bailout will go through anyway. Pelosi spoke on the floor of Congress and said that her constituents were opposed to the bailout but she essentially dismissed them as she presented her position that the bailout needs to happen.

Most of the American sheeple won't do anything, particularly since they just blindly accept what the media and their politicians tell them.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Why is it logical that the federal government must do something? It was the government that got us into this mess in the first place.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

It was greed that got us into this place.

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No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography