The Financial Bailout Fiasco

Having sneaked through the House of Representatives last week, “cap and trade” is now a Senate vote away from becoming part of our everyday lives. The deal making continued right up until the final minutes, with the bill’s co-author Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, doling out billions of dollars in promises on the House floor to secure the final votes needed for passage. This is another bill passed by Congress where no members had an opportunity to read the bill, because most of the members did not receive the last 300 pages of the 1,400-page bill until 3:06 a.m. last Friday, June 26, the day the bill was voted on and passed.

The experience with such CO2-cutting plans elsewhere suggests there are just two problems with it: the “cap” and the “trade.”............

What it has been, though, is a new way for financial firms to make money out of thin air —- literally, in this case.
Handing traders and bankers this new fake-money printing press is effectively another bailout we’re funding.
Either cap and trade will work, and the economy will sink alongside emissions, or it won’t, and we’ll merely have a new system of corporate welfare.
Either way, we don’t need it.

Atlanta Journal Constitution - Kyle Wing http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/07/02/wingfielded0...
New York Times - John M. Broder http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/us/politics/01climate.html?ref=politics
Herman Cain http://www.northstarwriters.com/hc170.htm