"This is a pivotal moment for America's economy," Bush said. He said that a financial contagion that began with low-quality home mortgages had "spread throughout our financial system."
"This has led to an erosion of confidence that has frozen many financial transactions including loans to consumers and to businesses seeking to expand and create jobs," Bush said.
"As a result we must act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk. There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem. Now is the time to solve it."
He said steps being envisioned by the administration — which Paulson said earlier Friday could entail "hundreds of billions" of dollars — were not without risk.
"These measures will require us to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line. This action does entail risk, but we expect that this money will eventually be paid back," Bush said.
"The risk ... of not acting would be far higher. Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts and further erode housing values, as well as dry up loans for new homes and cars and college tuitions. These are risks that America cannot afford to take."
"Our system of free enterprise rests on the conviction that the federal government should interfere in the marketplace only when necessary. Given the precarious state of today's financial markets, and their vital importance to the daily lives of the American people, government intervention is not only warranted, it is essential," Bush.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080919/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_markets;_ylt=Asf...
Who gives a shit what Bush says anymore. He and his administration have lost all credibility in every area. They have proven themselves to be not only incompetent, but idiots, too.
"We have a treasury secretary in America - Hank Paulson. I'm afraid he's gone insane. He's become like the Colonel Kurtz of Treasury Secretaries. He's gone native. He's co-opted trillions of dollars of American taxpayers' money and he's playing hedge fund like a rogue trader. We have got a rogue trader in the Treasury Secretary's office. He's being aided and abetted by Ben Bernanke who's been discredited as the entire Federal Reserve Bank has been utterly discredited. We're looking at a possible inflationary depression in America and the worse is yet to come, much worse is yet to come."
"To pay for all this insanity from Hank Paulson, they have two options. They can either raise taxes or they can inflate the money supply. They can destroy these things US dollars [waves a dollar bill at the camera]. Dollars 30 years ago used to be backed by this stuff - gold [waves a gold coin at the camera]. Now thanks to Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke US dollars are backed by these - bananas [waves a banana at the camera]. They're absolutely worthless. Anyone buying US dollars today is going to lose money." -Paris-based financial analyst Max Keiser on the US financial meltdown on September 20.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=70069§ionid=3510302
This link, http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/paulson_plan_cost/index.htm..., shows that the those who pay taxes could be on the hook for $1.3 trillion dollars. Our population is now over 300,000,000 so that could be as little as $4,000.00 per citizen if something goes wrong, and we actually have to pay ourselves (or whomever owns the debt). But how much is that to those who pay taxes? How many pay taxes? Is it maybe a quarter of the population which raises the the indebtedness of taxpayers for this mess to $16,000.00 per taxpayer (I paid a little over $8,000 in federal income tax last year), But the government will issue bonds, I suppose, to be bought by foreign investors and paid with future taxation. This is supposedly better than paying taxes now. But as the other nations such as China continue to develop infrastructure that they need to furnish their needs will they even want to deal with this country? Other than entertainment and perhaps crops what do we have to offer them? At what point do their middle- and upper-middle-class look at this country, and decide it is a "bad bet"? How long can we keep this "Ponzi scheme" going?