Revised Revised Bailout bill

The "bailout" will NOT solve the crisis, as previously blogged, the issue is of trust. If companies where properly valued, lenders would gain confidence to resume normal lending. This bill does zero to require companies to bring their accounting to International Accounting Standards. Further, the problem stemmed NOT from mortgages, but from mortgages that have not been "mark to market" in 8 years. Lawmakers are pushing to change the law AGAINST marking to market securities that currently follow this practice, in place since the last Great Depression. Without valuing assets using international standards, the issue of "trust" will get worse, not better.

To top it off, this bill will allow the USA to BAILOUT foreign banks. Yes, you read this correct. Banks based across the world can transfer assets into American divisions and use American Tax dollars to take ownership of bad debt. Further, Bernanke stated that he would recommend against a bill that specifically forbid USA dollars from taking ownership of foreign debt.

Congressman Brad Sherman of California clearly laid out that foreign debt purchasing will be allowed by this bailout.
One positive part of the bill is to raise the FDIC insurance from 100K to 250K, but as previously discussed the FDIC is near bankrupt, and that was before the WaMu failure. So keep in mind, aside from this bailout, more debt will be generated by FDIC covering losses.

The bottom line: This bill will NOT help the economy long term, but in fact hurt it. USA dollars will be used to pay off foreign debt and reckless corporations, who will be enabled to continue to act recklessly. And as the US acts reckless we risk losing world trust over the US governments valuation and US dollar, which in turn may crank up interest rates further adding to the cost of US debt service.

All of these actions are being taken to restore faith in the economy, when all it takes is to come clean and adopt international account standards. And that, of course, is the one action this bill will not implement.

So please contact your representatives and tell them, "There is no such thing as a free bailout" and vote NO!
Want a better solution? Check out Irelands version of a bailout, they did it right.

(image source)