Bail Out Average Americans, Not Bankers
Behind all the hype and technical jargon surrounding the nation’s banking and mortgage crises, the bottom line comes down to answering this question: Does the nation want to spend its resources on rich bank stockholders or on roads, bridges, schools and other necessary projects?
Speaking during a workshop at the America’s Future Now conference this morning, several members of a panel on the banking crisis said the financial system is broken and that the Obama administration’s plan to fix it doesn’t address the scope of the problem. The three-day conference is sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future.
(Click here to read more news and views from the America’s Future Now conference. You also can listen to the conference sessions live on BlogTalk Radio here.)
The administration is holding its breath, hoping big banks will recover the value of some of their assets over time if taxpayers bail them out over the short haul, said Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel.
America’s Future Conference: Restore the Middle Class with Employee Free Choice
 |
||||
|
||||
The nation’s economy is in a tailspin, and one of the best ways to help turn it around is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, several speakers said this morning at a national gathering of progressive leaders.
Sponsored by Campaign for America’s Future, the previously titled “Take Back America” annual conference has been renamed “America’s Future Now” to emphasize that this could be the greatest period of progressive reform since the 1960s.
Opening the three-day conference in Washington, D.C., Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, told participants the Employee Free Choice Act is
essential to insuring that the blessings of the next prosperity will be widely shared, that the American middle class will expand, not decline, and that the progressive majority will be consolidated.
Banks Need Restructuring, Not Bailouts
The Treasury Department’s bank bailout plan is built on the faulty assumption that the financial crisis is the result of a temporary lack of a market for current financial products—and presumes the losses can be made up after confidence in the system is restored. The reality is that the entire financial services industry needs to be restructured and the sooner, the better, two experts said recently.
Writing at the Campaign for America’s Future website, Susan Ozawa points out that during a recent conference, Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), and economist Robert Kuttner said broader and deeper changes need to be made than the Treasury plan envisions. They spoke April 8 at the “Lifting the TARP: Is a Reconstruction Finance Corporation a Better Way to Restore the Banking System?” conference sponsored by Demos in Washington, D.C.
