Kucinich floats his own Wall Street bailout plan

[G_j]

http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2008/09/kucinich_floats_own_bailout_pl.html

Kucinich floats his own Wall Street bailout plan

Nevermind that Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year on Friday.

Nevermind that it already has a full plate processing President Bush's newly proposed financial industry bailout and other bills that must pass before legislators skip town.

Cleveland Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich announced today that he's introducing legislation to create a "United States Mutual Trust Fund" that he says would turn the Wall Street financial disaster into "an opportunity to create a genuine ownership society."

Here's how Kucinich explains his idea:

"Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, tomorrow I will offer legislation to create a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, at market value and not higher, convert those assets to shares, and distrubte $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American."

"Simply purchasing bad debt, 'cash for trash' and not recieving anything of value or giving $700 billion and not having a commensurate equity interest in Wall Street firms is unacceptable," Kucinich said in a press release.

Kucinich spokesman Nathan White did not know how much it would cost taxpayers to implement such a program, and said Kucinich hasn't yet got cosponsors for his bill. Kucinich arrived at the $2,300 figure by dividing the bailout's $700 billion cost by the roughly 300 million U.S. population, his press release said.

[babylonsister]

1. Sigh. No, Dennis. It might take a village! Or lots of smart people

to figure it out. If they can. Or not. Bon soir.

[MercutioATC]

2. Nice thought, but it wouldn't solve anything.

He's my Congressman and I vote for him every time, but Dennis should leave the financial planning heavy lifting to people more qualified.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. What it does is shows there are other options.

We don't have to settle for the GOP's knee-jerk "solution"; there are many people out there with ideas.

[MercutioATC]

4. Yes, it does do that.

It's still not a very productive idea...

[ColbertWatcher]

5. Well, we keep what we like and throw the rest away.

Too bad, we aren't allowed to with the GOP's program.

[mikelgb]

8. ure right we should just shut up and give Henry $700 billion

wtf does Dennis know anyway

didn't he get us in this mess?

[MercutioATC]

9. You DO realize that those are not the only two choices, right?

The fact that Paulson's plan is atrocious does not automatically make ANY opposing plan a good idea.

[mikelgb]

10. what's the best one in ure humble opinion?

[MercutioATC]

11. First, let me make two things clear:

1) I'm not en economics expert, and

2) I don't believe there's a solution that will not be very painful. It took us decades to get here, and we're not going to solve this thing quickly or comfortably.

That said, I think the lesser of the many evils would be to temporarily federalize the failing elements of the U.S. banking system while allowing healthy private lenders to continue operate under strict new regulations.

Couple this with a "New Deal"-type infrastructure/research program that would absorb at least a good portion of the job losses that would result from this and a serious reevaluation of our financial obligations abroad.

The goal is to get the biggest bang for our buck while making fundamental reforms quickly...all while trying to remain solvent and protecting Main Street.


It's not a perfect plan. Hell, it's not even a GOOD plan...but I don't believe we have the luxury of choosing a "good" plan. This is going to hurt. Something along these lines would minimize the impact to the average American and credit availability. I think that's where our priorities should be.


(on edit) I believe the solution needs to be bottom-up, not top-down. That's the focus I've tried to stress with these ideas.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

6. Being we know congress will cave and give Bush what he wants. Again.

At least DK's plan, gives us all something for our money.

[G_j]

7. it make sense

anyway,
a reminder that there are better ideas..

[negativenihil]

12. this is better...

...than just simply being asked to buy a bill of goods an d really get nothing in return.

as others have said there's no painless way to get out of this - at least with Kucinich's idea we get *something* out of the deal...

[G_j]

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