Worried Americans divided on bailout

Don't let Bush use his "scare tactics" to frighten you into voting this panic measure into place. THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS, despite what the alarmists are shrieking. In reality, they are trying to use this as an opportunity to rush something through before anyone can examine it too closely.
Funny how Bush said "every day the consequences will be worse" - and then says that Congress is taking the day off! Does anyone else see the contradiction there???

How come no one ever mentions how the banks got into this mess in the first place? Why is it always the poor working class that has to take on the responsiblity of the mistakes made by the wealthy, the heads of the banks where were they when these problems first started to arise. If we did this concerning our own finances, who would we turn to? Maybe the CEO's of these big companies need to come down to earth, I actually think we need another depression to get people back to reality and what is important and what is not. Then everyone would no how it feels to be poor like me, or should I say poor working class.

I'm not sure it matters in the long run if we pass this thing or not. The reality is that the culture of the US is not sustainable and how we do economics is a big piece of that. Did we really think we could consume forever without a stopping point? I think there were MANY people who participated in the lead up to this. Consumers, banks, regulators, congress, the white house and wall street all played a role, and none of those roles were being looked to too strongly in a culture of over-consumption. All of this happened in a culture of hubris (the same one that has a lot of the world not very happy with us right now).

A bailout only staves off the inevitable. Our economy isn't viable long term. The sooner we can get honest about that, the less our grandchildren will shake their heads at us.

Can we stop the knee jerk reaction to "socialism" and actually look at the standard of living in countries with socialized programs? What are we so afraid of? Taking care of our brothers and sisters? We are afraid of a word and it makes it hard to have real dialogue.

Meanwhile if we do the bailout, what can we contribute to the bigger "bailout" needs: global warming is indeed rearing its ugly head. We'd be wiser to look toward sustainability at this point and start putting money into educating people about the natural limits we are butting up against rather than expending more energy on trying to isolate little lines of “blame”. You think Wall Street is out of control, try more hurricanes and flooding with our hands tied financially...

YA, I hear a condradiction. YOU Rick!

Bush doesn't control congress and if you have any "...OTHER OPTIONS." I suggest you share them with us! There's no better time to stand up and be heard RICK! Let's hear it!

NO BAILOUT.................We have to face the music sooner or later, I would rather do it sooner than later and not have 700 billion dollars to pay back on top of it. I have been in a recession since gas prices went skyhigh...find someone else to bully GW.

I am against the bill also because originally it was going to bail out wall street. Why can't they mail us each a check for 8,000 a piece and that would help us out a bit since prices have gone very high. It is hard to save also but yet sometimes you have to work three jobs to make ends meet.

Enough of the blame Bush BS. I could of sworn I saw Barney Frank trying to ram this down our throats yesterday

I keep hearing talk of "bailing out Wall Street," as if the average working stiff doesn't have a stake in the U.S. economy. People, how much pain do you want to bear in the name of 'principle?' If this ship sinks, we're all going to go down with it. This is a capitalist economy - it doesn't work if companies and individuals don't have access to capital. So let's get something passed here so the system can continue to function.

"The average American CEO makes 344 times the pay of the average worker" - Boston Globe.
"Two-thirds of American corporations paid no income tax between 1998 and 2005" - Boston Globe.

Any other questions?

if 44% blame the republicans than 44% OF THIS NATION ARE NITWITS; our esteemed chairman of the banking commitee;the beloved Barney Frank is the # 1 reason for this fiasco;who said 3 years ago that fannie mae and freddie mac were in great shape; ninja loans,no money down;now the chickens have come home to roost; if Obama is elected just look at the taxes in Chicago to see what we are in for.......................France !

Madame M - the bail out is SOCIALISM. We don't need the bail out, let them sink. Socialism does not work, wake up and look at the countries you talk about without the rose colored glasses.

The UK is becoming a Police State, Canada you have to wait in line to get life saving medical treatment so that they come HERE to get it. France is overrun by Fanatical Muslims destroying the place. . . Russa is a mess. . . . you don't get it do you. . . . We need to stop Obama and the Socialist/Communists from destroying this country.

I don't blame the Republicans for killing the bailout bill, I give them credit for it! As for who the America people blame for this, that is a testament to the corruption of the media, which refuses to tell them the truth. The cause of the problem is Democrats' "mortgages for social justice" policy. Let's not lose sight of this, nor should we forget one of the chief engineers of this fiasco was Barack Obama, whose "community organizing" involved work with culprits like ACORN, one of the chief agitators for these criminally irresponsible lending policies, and to whom the Dems tried to give a multi-billion $$$ kiss in the first version of the bailout bill. The Democrats have no shame, and why should they when they have the corrupt media covering for them? The truth is, the current situation was created by design rather than by accident. Subprime loans were bought up by Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, packaged with good loans to 'spread the risk', i.e., to expose all of us to this malfeasance, and sold as securities . This is far, far beyond incompetence. This is gross, treasonous, criminal negligence. Let the impeachment hearings begin.

"Bush doesn't control congress and if you have any "...OTHER OPTIONS." I suggest you share them with us! There's no better time to stand up and be heard RICK! Let's hear it!"

I didn't come up with the "Other Options" - there are already several financial and economic experts discussing them all over the media - all you have to do is listen to someone else besides Bush once in a while. Believe it or not, he's not an economic genius.

I love how the Liberals love to spin the failure of the bailout passing on Republicans! Do you guys even know simple math? Hmm...lets see...bill failed by 12 votes, 95 Democrats voted against the bill! If the 95 Democrats that voted against the bill voted for it...it would have passed with flying colors! So stop blaming the Republicans you morons. Pelosi and her minions are the morons that let this bill fail and I for one am glad for their ineptitude!

This bill has no business passing! I am glad someone is stepping up for Americans on Main Street and it is not Nobama and the Democrooks! Its the Free Market Conservatives...Good Job!

NO BAILOUT...........Give America some credit (no pun intended). The strong will survive and the weak deserve whatever happens to them. The only way to correct our economy is to let the economy correct itself. The bailout is just plain wrong.

If the bailout doesn't pass, then the banks will have no liquidity. So what? Well, then assets get frozen, else there's a run on the bank, and the FDIC intercedes and negotiates the sale of those assets. With a lack of liquidity, it means that there is no access to credit. No credit means that businesses that often rely on credit to operate on a daily basis will either pay a much higher interest rate, or have no access to credit funds. They would then only be able to operate by reducing costs -- of which employees make up the largest amount. The whole implication is that unemployment will pop big if credit liquidity doesn't become available soon. When people become unemployed, then they cut back on things like making mortgage payments, which means even more foreclosures and further erosion of real estate valuations. Next thing you know, local towns' tax bases erode away, and costs (such as road repair and schools) need to be cut. You then have a more dismal spiral into deep economic recession or depression.

We're at a point that if you like to things like having a job, buying things on a credit card, having ready access to cash via an ATM, etc. you should want this bailout passed, and fast.

For all you no-bailout people....I hope you idiots are the first one's to lose your job, savings, house, car, in short everything....

For the sake of everything intelligent, this bill needs to get passed, and SOON!

And to the morons that keep saying the Dems screwed up this bill...due to the magnitude of $$$ involved, this bill had to be completelty unpartisan. Well how can the bill be unpartisan when 2/3's of Dems voted yes, and 2/3's of Republican's voted no????!?!?!?

It should not be the role of the federal government to bail out failed CEOs and bad business practices using taxpayer money. A retrenchment of the economy would be painful but it is time we as Americans stopped living beyond our means at all levels of society.

There has to be a "bailout" in some form. The one being purposed can of course be debated for years, and pehaps should be. But, from all I've read, and analogies I've head i.e. "a bandaid" , "quick-fix", etc., the one that makes the most sense is "a plane flying out of control that needs to land to be fixed or it will crash."
We need reforms in the system and we need leadership at all levels. If the financial system isn't functioning nothing will function effectively. Unfortunately whats driving our congress right now is the vocal minority ranting about everything from "greedy Wallstreet Fatcats" to symbols of unity such as " global warming" and "natural sustainability". Important, yes, but we need to fix the engine before we take off again.

Inportanty, yes

Respectfully, bette debole... Someone did mention "how the banks got into this mess in the first place." That would have been Nancy Pelosi, yesterday, in remarks that were called unacceptably partisan by the house republicals and John McSame.

Didn't the Fed just lend out 1.5 trillion dollars to banks this week? $1.5 trillion is much larger than $250 or $750 billion right? There was no bailout vote. No one complained, no one cried out about socialism. So why is everyone freaking out about this $700 billion dollar bailout? The U.S. has been in a recession for a while now, and the only reason that the statistics don't show it is that they are using an inflation number that is much too low. If the real inflation number were to be inserted, we would see that U.S. economic growth is negative...and has been for a very long time.

Is it not obvious by now that both parties have not been honest with the people? Paradigms of Republican vs. Democrat or Conservative vs. Progressive have been designed for obfuscation by a small group of ambitious insiders in order to centralize power.

Bill Clinton and George Bush are equally responsible! While Bush has clearly proved to be far more destructive, it is a fair to say that Clinton was the warm up band for George Bush. Clinton discredited and destroyed the long standing principles of social democracy that had guided the party since the New Deal, legislation that was not supported by other democrats. This pushed the door wide open for Bush and party to clean up later on.

This is just the politics of fear for the benefit of the wealthy. If our economy needs to take a hit so be it, as long as true change comes. Our current economy is so distorted to the benefit of the super wealthy that it's not worth keeping in its present form. The average person can get nowhere, and that's before all the taxes go up dramatically to pay for all the bailouts. Face it, the country is broken, and needs to be fixed. 700 Billion will fix nothing and continue our decline. We need to get back to basics, and away from the rule of the super-rich. I'm not usually a big fan of Republican congressman but I'm hoping they continue to hold against this bailout.

DEPRESSION!!!!
MAYBE A DEPRESSION IS WHAT WE NEED TO SHAKE THINGS UP. TO CHANGE HOW POLITICIANS "RUN" OUR COUNTRY. OR SHOULD I SAY RUN IT INTO RUIN. THE PROBLEM WITH THE BAILOUT IS THAT WE DO NOT HAVE THE MONEY TO BAIL ANYONE OUT. THIS COUNTRY HAS THE BIGGEST DEFICIT EVER, AND WE ARE TALKING ABOUT BAILOUT. WHERE THE MONEY IS COMING FROM? FROM THE FED'S MONEY TREE IN THE BACKYARD OF THE WHITEHOUSE. WE ARE EITHER GOING TO BORROW IT (COSTING US AN ARM AND BOTH LEGS) OR WE ARE GOING TO PRINT IT AND THAT WILL CERTAINLY DECREASE THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR EVEN MORE. SO IF YOU THINK THAT GAS AND OTHER CONSUMER STAPLES ARE GETTING EXPENSIVE, WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OUR DOLLAR KEEPS LOOSING VALUE. WE ARE BECOMING WELFARE COUNTRY WHERE THE GAVERMENT HAVE TO BAIL EVERYBODY OUT. WE ARE AMERICANS!! THIS IS THE GREATES COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. WE DO NOT NEED A BAILOUT!!! WE NEED TO GET TOGETHER AND WORK HARDER THAT EVER A HELP EACH OTHER TO GET TROUGH THIS. WE NEED TO SHOW THE REST OF THE WORLD WHAT WE CAN DO AND WILL DO. WE ARE THE BEST AND WE RUN THIS PLANET!!!!

We're all in this together and need to take action. But we don't need a bailout, we need a buy-in. The smart thing to do is offer the fat cats our money to save their companies, under the condition that if they take it, we the taxpayers get a seat at the table as part OWNERS of their business -- and we will stay there until such time as we choose to sell our shares, under terms favorable to US. Ideally the federal government shouldn't be in the business of owning investment banks, but in the short term it's better than just throwing money at them and encouraging more insanity.

Don't blame Bush. This has roots deeper in the past than Bush or Clinton. This lands at REAGAN'S feet. Yes, Mr "Government is the problem"...LOL...under a Reaganite government, that finally came true. He and his followers (think Gingrich, Gramm and DeLay) set the pattern for the militarism, the neglect, and the corporate buyout of our democracy -- which led straight to Iraq, Katrina, the dismantling of American industry, the stagnation of the middle class, and the bubble economy. Bush wasn't the perp, he was just standing next to the body when the cops got there.

Whoa....! Boys.......Who took this poll and where was it taken, the floor of wallstreet? I can't find 1 person that want this bailout much less than 4.7 of them. How miracuolous congress has a poll to support their new position. Is the dog waggin the tail for you News Jocks up there in Washington , gentllemen come on...., or do you investigate these figures you are spoon feeding us . have you done a poll? This new poll out just in time for the new vote. Hummm...

cm
Albuquerque NM

Do some research - Clinton started this back in 1999 with his idea that "everyone deserves to have a house", and then loosened lending restrictions so that high-risk borrowers could get loans.
Do some more research - back in 2004, regulators warned about these problems which could lead to an imminent crisis (like now) and were shouted down and ridiculed by democrats who angrily denied that there was a problem and accused the regulators of trying to do "heart surgery for a cold". The government was warned, people, but they chose to ignore it because they were enjoying the money they were getting.