Handing $700 billion to Wall Street seems like such a wasted opportunity. Why not make them earn it? Here's an idea.
Get a glitzy studio and a charismatic host (Jon Stewart maybe?) to anchor an eight-hour television spectacular, say 6pm to 2am on one of the major networks. Scripted comedy bits, musical guests, etc. But the live feeds are the main attraction. Train long-lens TV cameras and sensitive directional microphones on several high skyscraper windows.
It is 6pm. The sun is starting to set over New York. Everyone in the US is glued to their television sets. The ghost of Don LaFontaine introduces the event as the lights come up, the orchestra swells, and the telethon begins.
There's a big, flashy counter on the set and constantly on screen in a lower third. This shows the current amount the US government will give to Wall Street. It starts at $0.
The host explains the premise: every time a board member or executive of a bank appears at one of the windows, they go live to that camera and capture that guy's final, emotional, potentially sincere apology to the world, followed (after a countdown from the studio audience) by their leap from the 40th floor window (with hilarious slide-whistle sound effect). For every suicide, the banks get $1bn in bailout.
Like all telethons, it will probably start slow, but eventually the banks will be practically pushing their executives out of windows for the money. The last hour will be chaos as they rush to beat the deadline.
The banks get their money. (If they're really good, they could even make a profit.) The public get something for their money. The government gets to make a meaningful trade. And a load of greedy, worthless imbeciles who caused the mess in the first place are removed from the gene pool. Everybody wins.
Or you could just, y'know, hand them $700bn. Come on, Congress, there's still time. Where's your sense of theatrics?
But... but they're going to get their money back! Right?
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The latest large bailout, purportedly of Portugal, turns out to include many billions just for for the use of the Portugese banks, who themselves in turn are in debt to many foreign banks. Who is this bailout aimed at exactly, the Portugese people or the international banking system?
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When privately-owned banks create money as 'loans', the profits (interest and seignorage) go back to them. If we had more public banks, we could bank with them, get our 'loans' from them too, and the profits would go back to the owners as before except that this time, it being a public bank, it's us! Every time we took out a bank 'loan', we the community would be the ones to profit, not private bankers! So, then let's bring on the publicly owned banks, right? Wrong! Northern Rock, the only completely publicly-owned bank we have in the country, is being sold by the government, the one supposed to act on behalf of the electorate, back to the banking community that ruined it in the first place! This is an appalling misjudgement.
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