We should not bail out the Automakers with Tax dollars

I feel Bill F. is completely correct. Here's hoping the incoming administration pays attention to this intelligent yet prophetic person and others like him.

We may have, we certainly should have. Of course hind sight always looks clearer, and unfortunately what was done, now is. It seems though that once one tries to "help" one faction, the rest come running up asking for the same handouts. Hey, it's human nature. My grandmother always said "you open the screen door and all the flies will come in".

Now everyone wants a piece of the action, however, what it feels like is that no one at the top of the company food chain is willing to cut their personal losses..ie: wages, mansions, cars, boats & other toys,nice extras etc. etc.. They,of course, want their lives to remain the same, however without looking, or caring about the rest of the population.

The bail outs seem to go to the top and stay there. Grandmothers are wise, mine again, would say "your choices/your consequences". I believe we should now NOT be thinking of the ones at the top, they should have known better, in fact I am sure they knew exactly what they were doing; instead, we should be helping at the bottom, they will inevitably do better if given their confidence back, and pride of accomplishment from working once again, which will in turn be given back as buying power.

History does tell it all, the best hind sight ever!
Let's not "let them eat cake"!

Obviously the politicians, and or big business interests, cannot be trusted. They got us into, or allowed this to happen. Either by greed or mismanagement. Maybe the start of the fix is to get together a panel of people like Fleckenstein to control and mandate what needs to be done to bring this country and eventually the world economies back on a more growing track.
Question: What year did these regulations or removal of regulations start what caused the very start of the economic crisis.
Presidency of George Senior, Clinton, or GWB?

So, if we are suppose to start consuming to save the economy, why hasn't our brilliant politicians figured out we need gift cards not tax rebates? Then we are forced to buy something. I'm being cynical, of course. What a mess. I can't wait for people to turn in their credit cards just like they are walking away from their houses. The Banks, who we are bailing out are raising their charges to us, giving the execs bonuses, and they continue to sell credit swaps, etc. Makes me sick

We need to highlight Bill's comment about the regulations/regulators to all of our politicians. What we DO NOT NEED is more regulatory rule, but what we DO NEED is for the regulators to actually regulate using the rules in place. We also need to examine the gaps in the regulatory structure and clamp down when companies intentionally target those gaps, such as how Credit Default Swaps are really "insurance", but are not called "insurance" and therefore are not regulated by the existing insurance regulation (or any other). They fell into a gray area between regulators, and now CDS's threaten to magnify the problem of defaulting companies. I blame the economic crisis on the regulatory failure over MANY years. I'm glad to see Fleck getting more airtime; hopefully Greenspan's airtime will decrease as he gets further discredited.

An interesting show with Mr. Fleckenstein. It was good to have Brad Goode there also with his CNBC experience. You should get Mr. F. back again to give his opinion on what it will take for this economic crisis to end other than housing prices to bottom out. I don't know the history of deregulation of the financial system but I do remember Harvey Pitt, GWB's first chairman of the SEC, who said that he felt the SEC should be reduced in size when he first took office. GWB has always been in favor of reducing or ignoring regulations. Great show Mr. Schauffler. You should have your web master update the credits for Upfront. Robert Mak is still listed there.

I bought a condo in 2006 and am disgusted that my investment and stock portfolio are taking a nose-dive due to the irresponsibility of those who were greedy--the homeowners who wanted homes they couldn't afford, and those in the financial industries who only thought about padding their own over-stuffed wallets. Is it fair that these financial fat cats get multi-million dollar payouts for bankrupting their companies? Absolutely not. They should have their homes and property seized and liquidated to help pay off the debts they caused. I'm not a financial person but the thought of bailing out any more companies due to egregious mismanagement is ridiculous. The government should reward those who didn't succumb to the greed and let the others fail.

As for the auto industry bail out (and any other private industry)...maybe the company execs could work for minimum wage for a change and figure out how to get themselves out of trouble. Isn't that why they get paid the big bucks???