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Originally Posted by 4Tran
So it's sort of natural that the politicians put their faith in the people who they have in place to address this kind of crisis: Paulson and Bernanke in particular. The problem here is that they were also responsible for getting the financial system into this mess to begin with; and that their proposed plan doesn't seem to do anything to actually fix it. And all that despite threatening to empty the taxpayers' coffers.
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I watched the panel for most of the day, and it was a sham. The panel was dead on, with pointed criticism that the plan wouldn't do anything but waste money and benefit outside interests but nothing to ease the burdens of the system and taxpayers. And the constant repetition that Paulson offered while dodging questions was disappointing. While I didn't expect him to have all of the specifics, I could hardly call his answers "plans".
He couldn't answer on the process of hierarchy and how the plan would be regulated. He couldn't answer plans beyond reverse auctions on how to resell the bad debt. He quickly said yes to bailing out foreign investment institutions who have stakes in US banks but had no answer as to why the plan had no provisions for covering home owners that are on the verge of or in foreclosure, which would further hurt home values and banking systems.
The request is too much money and power granted for a man who can't sit in front of a congressional panel and explain very clearly *what* he wants to do beyond stating that it's broad and important. We get that. Now explain the specifics, the why's and hows. It's why we're holding this panel, right?
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Originally Posted by karasuma
I LONG support that financial education should be studied in HS. People ought to know how credit card works, how money created and how mortgage works.
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I don't know about other school systems, but I took a full economics and marketing management course in High School. While I'll admit it's not a full college education the course covered the fundamentals of how finance works and how management handles financial decisions.
The problem is that the economy has changed a lot since my education 15 years ago. The average American has about the same grasp on the system as I do, maybe a little worse. We didn't all go to college to continue such studies so we're relatively uneducated on the complexities and changes of the system as it has become today.
This is why we're struggling to understand what all of this means.