“There Has To be Some Justice For Main Street.”
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The folks at Brave New Films talked to Rep. Marcy Kaptur and economist Dean Baker about the TARP, Wall Street and regular folks. As Rep. Kaptur said, somewhere in the economic mess, "there has to be some justice for Main Street."
Dean Baker lays things out on the table:
Certainly I can understand people being very upset at being forced out of their home. The government doesn’t appear to be anything to help homeowners, they’ve gone to great lengths to help banks — the banks that got us into this, and very often under false pretenses. As Rep. Kaptur has said, representations that were made to Congress before the passage of the TARP were not accurate, were not honest.
Most importantly…I’ll just mention that the Federal Reserve board had the authority to directly buy commercial paper from non-financial companies. The reason why this is important was it was argued before they passed the TARP, that the economy was shutting down because…other companies couldn’t get the money they needed to meet their payrolls and pay their bills.
Well, it turned out that the Fed always had the authority to simply buy their commercial paper so that they would have that money. And they began doing that only after Congress approved the TARP.
So this is really dishonest on the part of the Fed. And this is the sort of behavior that you could certainly understand people being outraged about: that we’re helping the banks, but not the people who are losing their homes.
Brave New Films wants to give regular folks an opportunity to tell their own stories:
Eight million people are at risk of losing their homes because Wall Street abandoned responsible lending practices to gain short-term profits. And the housing crisis is not just a problem for families facing foreclosure – it’s a problem for every homeowner in America. As long as foreclosures persist, home values will keep going down, and everyone loses.
We need your help. Have you been affected by the housing meltdown? Foreclosed on? Underwater? Record your story, or the story of a friend, family member, or neighbor, and send it to us. You can also add your written story along with a photo for the map. Then, watch the video stories of the families, mothers, fathers, and children who have lost, or are losing the place they call home.
It’s time regular folks had a louder voice in the halls of Congress. Here’s hoping this helps them do just that.
Why Christy! Pretty soon you’ll have us believing we can do things like conduct peaceful protests and call our Representatives and Senators and tell them how we feel!
You radical you. ?s