Voters worried by Wall Street crisis
A clear majority of voters believe that the economy is not fundamentally sound and that the federal government should try to fix the Wall Street crisis, according a new poll out this afternoon.
In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 62 percent said the government should step in while 37 percent said it should stay out and let the economy and financial markets recover on their own. Nearly two-thirds said the economy is not fundamentally sound and the same 66 percent said they were concerned, but not scared, by the Wall Street crisis, while 22 percent said they were scared.
But on the more specific question about bailing out financial institutions with taxpayer money, 55 percent agreed, but 44 percent opposed the moves. And 65 percent feared that any new government program would treat taxpayers unfairly, while only 34 percent said taxpayers would be treated fairly.
The poll also found that more voters blame Republicans (47 percent) than Democrats (24 percent) for the current problems in the financial sector.
In the presidential horse race, Democrat Barack Obama leads 51 percent to 47 percent for Republican John McCain among likely voters.
The survey was conducted Friday through Sunday and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Concerned is the wrong word. Try Angry. Overpaid financial "geniuses" made enormous mistakes and instead of paying the price their free market theory demands, they are to be rescued by the taxpayers. It is absurd!
I have been looking at reasons for the economic problems lately and have tried to find out who is responsible for this mess. I am hearing that de-regulation is the cause and I think that is a sound assumption. I am hearing about the up-tick rule being oblished as one cause of the falling market and The Gramm-Leach Bliley Act as a cause of of the poor lending practices. I started wondering which congress/senate party is responsible and found that republicans have controlled both the senate and house from 1994-2006. In 2000-2002 the senate was 50-50 but Cheney carried the tie breaking vote making the Senate a republican majority.
So the poll is right, the republicans have been in charge of the bill and law writing for more than a decade. I do think we have to bail out their mess. And I also think the executives who lobbied for the changes in lending practices should give their pay and benefits to the IRS and also those who voted to change the laws in the senate and congress should step down as well as give their pay to the IRS. I would also like to see those responsible in the private and public sectors do jail time.
In a few weeks we will make a choice that will decide our future. I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly. Also, he perfectly predicted the current real estate market meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen in the next couple years is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide the largest morgage bank in the world,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch which are 3 out of the top 5 wall street firms. Also, Fanny and Freddy Mae which hold 50 percent of the home loans in the United States. The government took them over because they are essentially bankrupt.If they didn't the entire financially system would virtually shut down, the stock market would crash and we would suffer beyond what any of us have seen before.
McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand exactly what is broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use complex mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.
Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He either didn't care or didn't realize that anything was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime.
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a surplus like Bush did but a tanking economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?
The chairman of McCains campaign recently said that people don't vote on issues they vote on a personality composite. Which means he is trying to sell you personality instead of results.
He believes people will vote against their own interests.
Let's teach him we are smarter than that .
Hold them accountable NOW! while it will still help.
Elect Obama Biden 2008
All congressional members should immediately forfeit their pay and benefits to the IRS for the remainder of their terms, or alternatively an amount equivalent of their pay and benefits for the remainder for their term should any member not fulfill the remainder of their term. Any congressional member who proves to have benefited from "insider trading" should be expelled, lose their retirement benefit and serve a prison term.
Any corporate officer of a public American company over the past 10 years who received more than 100 times the salary in any single year of the lowest paid employee for that year should be taxed that amount payable to the IRS and/or serve appropriate prison terms.
There is only one word for what has happened: irresponsibility and thievery.
I hate to see this bail out but seriously...what choice do we have? If the financial system in America fails, we all fail. In my lifetime, I've never seen the federal government move this fast on anything. Doesn't that make you wonder what else they know that we don't?
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