To say that the trillion dollar plus bailout about to be rammed through is wildly unpopular is a gross understatement. What’s surprising is that the conglomerate of critics is not limited to libertarians or fiscal conservatives or even pragmatists, but includes individuals who are quasi-socialists and/or typical Bush Admistration loyalists.
Luigi Zingales, a Professor at the University of Chicago School of Business-
“For somebody like me who believes strongly in the free market system, the most serious risk of the current situation is that the interest of a few financiers will undermine the fundamental workings of the capitalist system. The time has come to save capitalism from the capitalists.”
Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University-
President Bush is “asking for a huge amount of power,” - “He’s saying, ‘Trust me, I’m going to do it right if you give me absolute control.’ This is not a monarchy.
Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist and liberal columnist for The New York Times-
“I hate to say this, but looking at the plan as leaked, I have to say no deal,” he wrote on his blog at 4:46 p.m. Saturday. “Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets.”
Yves Smith, contributor to the finance blog Naked Capitalism-
“Given that continuing to buy U.S. assets will come under increasingly harsh scrutiny overseas, the U.S. needs to bend over backwards to devise a plan that at least looks credible in terms of directing the funds that come from taxpayers and lenders to their highest and best uses and implementing reforms that will restore active and prudent oversight of financial firms,” - “The administration’s demand for a free pass, even if Congress unwisely goes along, is likely to backfire with our foreign creditors.”
Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers-
“Has more money ever been given with fewer restrictions on how it is used? Ever?”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R- AL), ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, called it-
“the mother of all bailouts. I figure it will be at least half a trillion. But if you look at what the Fed has already done [by rescuing insurance giant AIG], and the extension of power to Treasury to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I believe we’re talking about a trillion dollars. [The Bush Administration] lurching from one crisis to another. They don’t seem to have a superplan to deal with this. … We want to see the plan. This is not a done deal yet. But we know there’s crisis, there’s stress, in the financial markets that we haven’t seen in, say, 70 years.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), a member of the Joint Economic Committee-
“What is missing from it and from the recent string of bailouts is a commitment to return to a free enterprise economy. … What we need now is not what could be nearly a trillion dollars in new taxpayer bailouts but pro-growth policies that allow our markets to correct and start growing again.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)-
“I am greatly concerned that the plan gives a single individual the unprecedented power to spend $1 trillion — trillion — dollars without any meaningful accountability. Never before in the history of our nation has so much power and money been concentrated in the hands of one person. This arrangement makes me deeply uncomfortable.”
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-
“In the short term, I have great concerns about spending taxpayer money with limited accountability for these actions,” Garrett said. “In the long term, I am very concerned about the inflationary pressures that will arise from this action.”
Michelle Malkin, conservative author and columnist-
“Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don’t fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses — without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”