You know it is appropriate that this action of the Congress is being timed to the opening of the Asian markets. How appropriate, given the fact that we are losing control of our financial destiny.
Mister Speaker, when I was a child, in Cleveland, there was a myth that if you took a shovel and dug a hole deep enough, you could get to China. We’re there.
Transcript below:
I rise in opposition, regretfully to the rule, and the underlying bill. If we really wanted to protect the taxpayers, we wouldn’t be paying cash for trash; 700 billion dollars in taxpayer funds which turns our beloved U.S. Treasury into a toxic landfill. This plan is a 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street speculators, bankers, lenders who operated for years without the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission,and the oversight of the Federal Reserve. This legislation does not do anything to punish the speculators; it rewards them by having the taxpayers bail them out. It has no additional controls of speculations. It has no strengthening of oversight; no mention of the implications of the Financial Modernization Act which took down Glass Steagall which provided those post-depression era protections so we wouldn’t be in this situation that we are in right now and I would predict, Mister Chairman, that we will be right back here in a few months with the same kind of problems because we are not solving the underlying matter here; which is a distortion of the economy because of speculation run wild on Wall Street.
Now, we have been given a plan. We haven’t been given alternatives. Alternatives would have required Wall Street to pay for its own bailout. This plan doesn’t suspend dividends, doesn’t force shareholders or creditors to directly contribute to the bailout. This plan rejected a .25% stock transfer tax that would have raised a hundred billion dollars from Wall Street. This legislation is further proof our government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards. Taking money from the pockets of the people of this country and putting it into the hands of the few. That is what our tax policy does. It accelerates the wealth of America upwards. That is what the war does. It accelerates the wealth of America upwards. That is what our energy policy does. It accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of the oil companies. That is what these financial policies do and it is how our national debt is done which had doubled in the last eight years. 700 billion dollars of the taxpayer dollars are being put on the hook.
When Wall Street makes a profit, it is their profit. When Wall Street loses money, our people lose money. 700 billion dollars. Why aren’t we bailing out those millions of Americans who are losing their homes? Why aren’t we addressing the fact that 50 million Americans don’t have any health care? It is absolutely astonishing, that we are talking about giving 700 billion dollars of taxpayer’s money which comes from the failure of the Fed, through a quadrupling of public and private debt during the time of Mister Greenspan; up to 43 TRILLION dollars. And we have no discussion at all about the underlying monetary policy.
There has been no discussion at all in any of this about the underlying dynamic of a debt-based monetary system. As long as we are working on a debt-based monetary system, with us having no control of our own money supply through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913; with the banks being able to literally make money out of thin air with their fractional reserve policies, how can we ever get to the bottom of a national debt that is building beyond our capacity to deal with it?
You know it is appropriate that this action of the Congress is being timed to the opening of the Asian markets. How appropriate, given the fact that we are losing control of our financial destiny.
Mister Speaker, when I was a child, in Cleveland, there was a myth that if you took a shovel and dug a hole deep enough, you could get to China. We’re there.
