Nobody is telling the taxpayers how this thing really works:
1. The Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE bank owned by the big banks, not the government.
2. Money is created in response to the demand for borrowing. Banks are allowed a ratio of 16:1 loans to actual assets/deposits.
3. Wall Street in collusion with the banks issued pretend insurance policies [without insurance reserves and asset requirements required of insurance companies] called credit default swaps [CDSs] on the mortgage backed securities [MBSs] They cross insure each other to the tune of total "derivatives" in the amount of $1 Quadrillion dollars-the total world economy is only $60 trillion!
They paid each other premiums and sold the paper back and forth to "wash it" and show it's "value" to the market.
The bank members of the Fed, who held many of these MBSs, called the CDBs on Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merrill Lynch to start the end game.
The Federal Reserves member banks are robbing us.
If we let the CDSs default then there are no Securities firms, hedge funds and many banks left standing.
They don't have the assets and reserves to backup their obligations under the CDSs. This is by design, so the banks can take over the big brokerage houses [they just got Lehman Bros, Merill Lynch and AIG], and now are blackmailing us into giving the $700 billion in exchange for all their bad MBSs.
Again: LEND them the money at interest on the condition that they lay off employees, slash salaries, and eliminate "performance" bonuses and golden paraschutes. If they fail to repay, then foreclose and expropriate.
With a loan, it is up to THEM to find buyers, liquidate assets and balance the market.
These guys have preached the Friedman primacy of the market for decades, let them prove it.
The dollar means nothing, but yet it means everything to the average American who is inevitably taking the biggest hit from all of this.
While Paulson's plan has a clause which would give immunity for the heads of these institutions.
Now ask yourselves, why would Paulson put that clause in there if they didn't know more than they are letting us taxpayers know?
