Well here we go again, gentle readers. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Utah Senator For Life Bob Bennett is champing at the bit to pass the "slightly tweaked" U.S. Senate version of the Banking Cartel Bailout Bill which was defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday. From this morning's SLTrib story:
WASHINGTON - Utah Sen. Bob Bennett joined other proponents of the failed Wall Street bailout who tried Tuesday to repackage it as a "financial rescue plan" that will save the average American from financial ruin.According to various other media sources, this bill could be brought to the Senate floor as early as this afternoon for a vote.
In a 20-minute speech on the floor of the Senate, Bennett, a Republican, warned that Congress would only have one more shot at this before the market tanks. He said the stock market plummeted Monday because Wall Street thought Congress had failed in its bid to pass a $700 billion boost to faltering financial firms. The market rebounded Tuesday, Bennett said, because political leaders promised to stay in Washington until a deal is reached.
"If we break the expectation once again, this time the market will drop and there will be no coming back up," Bennett said. "This time your 401(k), your pension plan, your retirement account will be hurt in a way that will take years to recover."
What Senator Bennett doesn't mention, of course is the $107,999 in campaign contributions the "good Utah Senator" has soaked up from banking interests since 1989, raising the inevitable question: exactly whose interests does Senator Bennett propose to protect, with his vigorous embrace of the U.S. Banking industry bailout?
In this connection we link a fine article from the Ludvig von Mises website, which provides this instructive text:
In this article, we will of course cover why the Keynesian justifications — coming from a "free-market" administration — are nonsense. But in the grand scheme, that's not entirely relevant. People didn't seriously consider the testimony of the tobacco company CEOs about the nonexistent dangers of smoking, because everyone knew those executives stood to lose billions from the settlement. So by the same token, no one should pay much attention to the official statements made by Henry Paulson, since he stands to personally be put in charge of doling out hundreds of billions of dollars to some of the most powerful people on the planet.Whether Senator Bennett can faithfully serve the interests of his consituents, while being the beneficiary of such banking industry largesse we do not know... but we believe his relationship with his banking benefactors raises some interesting questions. At the very least, Bennett is clearly parroting the sales pitch of the banking industry, who have a direct pecuniary interest in this bailout.
Being the curious type, we googled. We were interested in the viewpoints of non banking industry economic experts without such financial interests... and we found something most enlightening. We link below the September 24, 2008 statement (updated 9/27/08) of 231 American academic economists (including several Nobel laureates) on the subject of the bailout:
9/24/08 U.S. Economists' Statement
Experts are in plainly serious disagreement about this important matter. Taking the foregoing into account, it's obvious that this matter deserves further public debate, and should not be summarily shoved down the lumpencitizens' throats.
Contact Senators Bennett and Hatch, and demand public hearings on this matter. This is too important for a kneejerk response. Do it NOW:
Congressional Contact Links
Comments, anyone?
Update 10/1/08 9:51 a.m. MT: American taxpayers are enraged about the bailout. We learn now that the U.S. Congressional email server has been intermittently jammed. One of our gentle readers has thus forwarded to us a list of alternate Congressional contact links, which we've pasted to an archive page here:
Congress / Senate Switchboards
Snoozers will be losers.
