Bailing Out a Boat Full of Holes

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 by Inter Press Service
Bailing Out a Boat Full of Holes
by Adrianne Appel


BOSTON - The U.S. Treasury's bonanza from Congress to hand out 700 billion dollars to Wall Street is not what the country needs to right its shaky economy, many independent experts say.

"Despite the bailout, it's clear the economy is going into a deep recession," Robert E. Scott, senior international economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told IPS.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Tuesday that the U.S. economy is headed downward, hours after The Fed unveiled a programme to buy short-term debt in an effort to stimulate lending among businesses.

The Fed's action followed a drop in the Dow Jones industrial average on Monday to below 10,000 for the first time since 2004, and reports of plunging markets around the world, with markets in Brazil and Russia especially hard hit. Developing nations are bracing for harder times to come.

Banks around the world invested in the same troubled U.S. mortgage products that are deemed largely responsible for the downturn in the U.S. economy. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/08-1