President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday outlined a series of far-reaching steps - likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars - aimed at stemming a widening financial crisis that is roiling the financial markets and undermining confidence in the banking system.
"We must act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk," Bush said at a White House press conference. "There will be ample opportunity to discuss the origins of this problems. Now is the time to solve it."
"This is no time for partisanship," Bush added. "We need to move urgently needed legislation as quickly as possible without adding controversial provisions that could delay action."
Earlier, Paulson said that federal action would target the mortgage-related "illiquid assets" that are burdening the finance industry.
"The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy," said Paulson. "This troubled asset relief program must be properly designed and sufficiently large to have maximum impact."
The new program would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to Paulson.
Now, my gut reaction is "why am I paying for this", but then a bunch of financial people, who are easily smarter then me in this area, are saying it's a good thing and it should have come sooner.
So, maybe they know more then I do, maybe they know something that will be helpful. I'm just not sure. One thing I do know is that Obama's got a sneaky thing going on:
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Friday he supported efforts by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to shore up confidence in the financial markets and said he would hold off from presenting his own economic recovery plan.
"The events of the last few days have made it clear that we must take further bold and decisive action to shore up confidence in our financial markets and avoid a deepening economic crisis that could jeopardize the life savings and well-being of millions of Americans," Obama said in a statement.
Why is he "holding off" presenting his plan? Simple: He's waiting to see if this works or not. You see, if he comes out and says "this is exactly what I'm thinking", and it fails, it's a big hit against him. He's doing this for purely political reasons, not because he's looking out for the average American.
My bet is that his plan is filled with more regulation and higher taxes. I can almost guarantee that if this doesn't fix it, Obama's going to come out and say "I have a plan" and people will flock to it, regardless of if it's a good one or not. However, if this government plan does work, you'll never hear about Obama's "plan" again, regardless of what it contained, and I can equally guarantee that he won't show it to the public if the ideas in it are vastly different then what's going on right now.
Travis
No comments:
Post a Comment