peace,
Jim Davis Ozark Bioregion, USA
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=141735 http://www.amazon.com/Shia-Imami-Ismaili-Muslims-Introduction/dp/1430315628/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218913605&sr=8-2
--- On Thu, 9/25/08, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] so what do "we" think of the bailout?
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 10:28 PM
> Doug, Liza
>
> What do you think of "the" bailout? Not that
> there's an agreed on plan right now.
>
> What about "a" bailout? I mean a politically
> feasible one, not one that involves socializing finance
> capital.
>
> What bailout are we likely to get? What do you think of
> that hypothetical bailout?
>
> andie
>
>
>
>
> --- On Thu, 9/25/08, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> > Subject: [lbo-talk] so what do "we" think of
> the bailout?
> > To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> > Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 3:21 PM
> >
> <http://tbm.thebigmoney.com/articles/making-bail/2008/09/25/do-we-love-bailout
> >
> > >
> >
> > Do We Love the Bailout?
> >
> > By Liza Featherstone
> >
> > Last week, we—the American people—didn't seem
> to
> > like the notion of a
> > bailout, not one bit. A Rasmussen opinion poll [1]
> released
> > Sept. 17
> > found that just 7 percent of Americans favored
> "using
> > taxpayer funds
> > to keep a large institution solvent."
> Rasmussen's
> > results tend to skew
> > conservative compared with other pollsters, but it was
> > still a
> > dramatic finding. In fact, it's hard to find
> another
> > idea we hate that
> > much. For example, with 54 percent of Americans now
> saying
> > we should
> > have stayed out of Iraq, the war is unpopular-but
> nowhere
> > near the
> > depths of single digits. You might assume that,
> therefore,
> > an even
> > greater percentage would disdain Treasury Secretary
> Henry
> > Paulson's
> > scheme, announced only two days later, to push
> through, in
> > great
> > haste, the largest-scale government rescue of any
> financial
> > system in
> > history.
> >
> > But public opinion is way more complicated than that.
> A Pew
> > survey
> > released Wednesday [2] finds that 57 percent of the
> > public-a margin of
> > almost 2-to-1-favors Paulson's bailout scheme.
> > Rasmussen's voters like
> > it less than that-28 percent approved on Monday and 25
> > percent Tuesday
> > [3]-but they still like it better than they liked the
> > abstract idea of
> > a bailout last week. ABC News finds 44 percent
> approving of
> > the
> > Treasury's plan, while the Los Angeles
> Times/Bloomberg
> > poll [4] finds
> > only 31 percent approve, about the same as the Wall
> Street
> > Journal/NBC
> > poll [5]. These are radically different results. What
> in
> > the world is
> > going on here?
> >
> > As Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News,
> points out
> > [6] on his
> > blog, everything depends on how you ask the question.
> The
> > Pew survey
> > asks how people feel about "investing" money
> to
> > "try and keep
> > financial institutions and markets secure," while
> L.A.
> > Times/Bloomberg
> > asked if the government should "bail out private
> > companies" using
> > "taxpayer dollars." ABC News, most
> neutrally,
> > asked if people approved
> > of "the steps the Federal Reserve and the
> treasury
> > have taken to try
> > to deal with the current situation involving the stock
> > market and
> > major financial institutions." Rasmussen asked
> last
> > week how they like
> > "using taxpayer funds" to help "large
> > institutions"; this week, they
> > asked, "Do you favor or oppose the proposal for
> the
> > federal government
> > to purchase up to $700 billion in assets from
> financial
> > companies?"
> > Far more sober wording, but notice it still includes
> the
> > phrase
> > "federal government"-truthful but, for some
> > people, loaded. The Pew,
> > Bloomberg, ABC, and Rasmussen respondents were
> answering
> > completely
> > different questions.
> >
> > Why is language so important here? Partly because most
> > people don't
> > know what to think about economic policy. As Larry
> Bartels,
> > a
> > Princeton University scholar who has extensively
> chronicled
> > the
> > muddled contradictions of American political opinion,
> > reminded me
> > Wednesday, "Most people have no way at all to
> judge
> > for themselves
> > whether a bailout would be sensible or crazy."
> They
> > don't know what it
> > would involve, he explained, nor whether "the
> risk of
> > inaction is
> > massively frightening or largely manufactured."
> Even
> > worse, Bartels
> > adds, "they don't even have any clear
> conception
> > of how much money
> > $700 billion is."
> >
> > The less we understand an issue, the more vulnerable
> we are
> > to
> > delicate shifts in framing (e.g., investing vs.
> spending).
> > And in this
> > as in many economic matters, emotions are more
> important
> > than logic.
> > Eric Schoenberg, a behavioral economist at Columbia
> > Business School,
> > points to psychological factors explaining the
> reactions to
> > this
> > bailout. "People are willing to accept a decision
> that
> > harms them," he
> > explains, "if the alternative means that someone
> else
> > benefits
> > unfairly." The phenomenon, which is called the
> > "ultimatum game,"
> > explains why even though people may realize that their
> own
> > retirement
> > savings or other investments could be imperiled by a
> > financial crisis,
> > they still find it unacceptable that the banks are
> > receiving direct
> > assistance. Schoenberg says, "People feel that is
> very
> > unfair and they
> > find it really distasteful." (And, rationally,
> they
> > may also be
> > skeptical that former Goldman Sachs head Henry Paulson
> will
> > take steps
> > to make the bailout more equitable.) That's why,
> when
> > pollsters make
> > clear who's benefiting from the Paulson plan, they
> find
> > widespread
> > disapproval.
> >
> > Schoenberg points out, too, that when people face two
> > choices, both
> > bad-give your hard-earned tax dollars to rich bankers
> or
> > face a
> > possible economic collapse-they have a hard time
> deciding
> > and, in
> > fact, don't want to decide. That means, he says,
> they
> > are
> > "particularly influenced by moments where the
> bigger
> > loss is
> > emphasized." Different framing strategies render
> > different kinds of
> > losses more vividly. Since it has been so long since
> > Americans
> > experienced a real economic disaster, the loss of $700
> > billion in
> > taxpayer dollars looms larger to most people. On the
> other
> > hand,
> > people do pay attention to the administration's
> > reminders that
> > ordinary Americans could be personally affected by
> trouble
> > in the
> > financial markets; we could lose our jobs and
> retirement
> > savings and
> > be unable to borrow money to buy a home or even a car.
> Our
> > intense
> > loss aversion also explains why we love the plan when
> > it's framed as
> > an "investment," as Pew's pollsters did.
> > We're always on optimistic
> > alert for the possible "win-win" situation,
> no
> > matter how rare it may
> > be in economic reality.
> >
> > Wording matters because unlike most pundits and
> > politicians, who
> > strive for a coherent worldview, much of the public
> instead
> > harbors a
> > set of discrete opinions (if that-Bartels points out
> that
> > they may
> > "merely pretend to have views to humor the people
> > doing opinion
> > surveys"). People who always oppose government
> action
> > of any kind, or
> > always like redistribution schemes and hate big
> business,
> > constitute a
> > minority. This makes it hard to organize Americans
> around a
> > concrete,
> > 10-point program but also presents an opportunity.
> Thus, to
> > anyone
> > advocating ways to make the Paulson plan better: Our
> minds
> > are wide
> > open. Just don't remind us who's winning or
> how
> > much we stand to lose.
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
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>
>
>
>
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