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Just sent emails to Kerry, Kennedy, and Capuano
I urge my fellow Americans to join with me on this action. You can find your state's senators here and find your district's representative here.
I dashed this off myself in a minute. You can copy it if you'd like, but I encourage you to come up with your own words, too.
Conventional wisdom is that email, while it does have mass, still carries a fraction of the weight of snailmail or phone calls, so I plan on printing these out and mailing them to the same folks' offices.
Honest question: what is the experience of phoning your senator or representative like? I'm not sure that I want to have a two-way conversation with someone about this - I just want to make my stance and desires known, and then get out. The one time I phoned a senator's office, like four years ago (I don't even really recall what the issue was), I called off-hours and left a voicemail. That was OK. Rattling off a screed to a live human would be a tad more awkward, though.
I dashed this off myself in a minute. You can copy it if you'd like, but I encourage you to come up with your own words, too.
Dear $TITLE $LASTNAME:
I urge you to oppose the proposed $700 billion bailout of foundering financial companies through a massive federal purchase of bad mortgages and other assets.
I am dismayed and disgusted at the idea of using, all told, $1.8 trillion dollars[1] of taxpayer money in order to rescue private-sector firms from their own greed-driven mistakes, and hope that you consider this issue worth fighting.
I look forward to learning of your position and actions regarding this matter.
Sincerely,
Jason McIntosh
Somerville, MA
[1] Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/26808715
Conventional wisdom is that email, while it does have mass, still carries a fraction of the weight of snailmail or phone calls, so I plan on printing these out and mailing them to the same folks' offices.
Honest question: what is the experience of phoning your senator or representative like? I'm not sure that I want to have a two-way conversation with someone about this - I just want to make my stance and desires known, and then get out. The one time I phoned a senator's office, like four years ago (I don't even really recall what the issue was), I called off-hours and left a voicemail. That was OK. Rattling off a screed to a live human would be a tad more awkward, though.
If it's at market price they can sell it in the market
If purchasing bad debt at market price would be adequate to salvage these incompetently managed companies then there would be no need for a bailout because the companies could sell their debt in the market at the market price. That's not an assumption, it's a tautology!
There is a price at which this toxic paper will circulate, and that's the market price. It's just way below what the incompetents need to survive.
So either the bailout plan is a needless waste of taxpayer money, buying debt that could be sold in the market at exactly the same price without putting the taxpayer on the hook for anything, or it will involve buying debt with taxpayer's money at inflated prices.
If the former, then obviously no bailout is needed and spending public rather than private dollars is unconsionable.
If the latter, then the taxpayer is paying incompetents a premium for the assurance that those self-same incompetents will prosper to screw up another day. As a free bonus they also get a huge power-grab by the Secretary of the Treasury, who wants the power to command without judicial oversight.