The financial elite will propose a "new, improved" version of the bailout bill in the next couple of days. Here is some advanced ammunition to use against the proposal:
- Paulson and Congress pretended that the first bailout bill capped the initial round of funding to $200 billion, and capped executive compensation. However, treasury officials have admitted (when they thought the public wasn't listening) that the restrictions on disbursing more than 200 big ones and CEO compensation were lies that wouldn't be enforced (you can listen to their statements yourself: here's part 1 of 5)
- The boys pretended that the bailout was limited to $700 billion. But that was not true (see the final vesion of the bailout proposal on page 40). Indeed, a Bloomberg analyst says that the bailout could balloon to $5 trillion dollars. And remember that "in the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion", but it will end up costing at least $3 trillion dollars
- The snake oil salesmen said the bailout was needed to save the economy. But most experts who have looked at the bailout said it wasn't needed, wouldn't have worked, and would actually have made the economic crisis worse
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