The ONLY way Dems can win on a bailout plan is with PUNITIVE measures

[loudsue]

against the heavily paid senior managers of the companies we're supposed to bail out.

The Dems are stuck between a rock & a hard place.....which was totally intentional by bush, Paulson, Bernanke and the wall street assholes. They want everyone to be mad at the dems.

If the Dems do not pass a bailout, then the market will tank so bad we'll see blood on the floor of the stock exchange. If they DO pass a bailout, then the citizens of this country are going to be furious, the republicans will pin it on Dem leadership, and that brings the election close enough to steal.

So what the Dems have to do is something that wall streeters haven been paying them NOT to do for their whole political careers.... hold them accountable.

If they PUNISH the CEO's and executives, with hefty fines, investigations, audits, and any and all other public humiliation they can go through, and then pass legislation that keeps anything like this from happening again, then the public would be better able to swallow it.

But the THOUGHT of having these fucking assholes that ran this country into the ground financially just walk away from this with money in their pockets is SO FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE to those of us paying the tab. If you or I had brought down that kind of expense on this country, we'd be in fucking JAIL. Hell: We'd be UNDER the jail!! I know I'm not the only one in this country that has had it with two justice systems...one for friends of congress/bush, and one system for the rest of us. THAT is what so many of us can no longer tolerate.

This is what John Edwards was calling "The Two Americas".

Either punish these crooks, or keep our taxpayer money out of it.

[Eric J in MN]

1. The Chris Dodd bill lets Henry Paulson decide if...

...the pay is "excessive" at participating corporations.

Henry Paulson was paid $37 million in 2005 as CEO of Goldman Sachs.

I don't trust that Paulson's idea of excessive pay will resemble my idea of excessive pay.

The bill should say no executive at a participating corporation can receive more in compensation than the president of the US does.

(John McCain briefly floated that pay limit, but he hasn't really stuck with it. McCain didn't mention that in the debate last night.)