{"id":5093,"date":"2009-01-14T02:31:49","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T01:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5093"},"modified":"2009-01-14T02:31:49","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T01:31:49","slug":"don%e2%80%99t-give-the-banks-another-350-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/don%e2%80%99t-give-the-banks-another-350-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Give the Banks Another $350 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressive.org\/list\/thisjustin\">Matt Rothschild<\/a>\u00a0|<\/p>\n<p>Why in the world should we be giving the banks another $350 billion?<\/p>\n<p>They caused this financial crisis in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Then Bush and Paulson just threw billions of dollars at them.<\/p>\n<p>Bush and Paulson didn\u2019t demand a voting share of these banks.<\/p>\n<p>And the banks weren\u2019t required to lend to businesses, though that was the main rationale for the bailout.<\/p>\n<p>Nor were the banks required to refinance mortgages and go easy on foreclosures, though this is what triggered the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, the banks weren\u2019t required to do anything accept open their wallets.<\/p>\n<p>And afterward, they didn\u2019t even have to tell us, the taxpayers, what they did with the money, which was essentially to hoard it.<\/p>\n<p>Now they deserve $350 billion more?<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve got to be kidding.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s what Bush is saying. And he formally asked Congress to OK this second disbursement.<\/p>\n<p>The odd thing is that Obama urged Bush to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, Obama says he\u2019ll impose a lot more stringent requirements on what the banks do with that money, but if it\u2019s not in the legislation, and the banks get the money anyway, what leverage will he have?<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, we could use this $350 billion in much wiser and more progressive ways\u2013by helping people stay in their homes, for instance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe all have a huge stake in stopping this heist,\u201d as Naomi Klein told me a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n<p>Congress shouldn\u2019t be dispensing the $350 billion.<\/p>\n<p>It should be saying, \u201cStop, thief!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Matt Rothschild\u00a0| Why in the world should we be giving the banks another $350 billion? They caused this financial crisis in the first place. Then Bush and Paulson just threw billions of dollars at them. Bush and Paulson didn\u2019t demand a voting share of these banks. And the banks weren\u2019t required to lend to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5624],"class_list":{"0":"post-5093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"tag-money"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}