Name and Link	Type of Resource	Description

US Seizes Control of AIG with $85 Billion Bailout, A democracynow interview with Nomi Prins and Michael Hudson. September 17th, 2008 Transcript and audio download available Here	Interview- audio and transcript	""
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker on the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout of Wall Street, the Largest Government Bailout of Private Industry in US History Democracy Now Interview September 22, 2008 Transcript and audio download available Here	Interview- audio and transcript	""
Michael Hudson Financial Bailout: America's Own Kleptocracy. The largest transformation of America's Financial System since the Great Depression Global Research, September 20, 2008 Available Here	Article	Opening intro:"Nobody expected industrial capitalism to end up like this. Nobody even saw it evolving in this direction. Marxists saw industrialists growing into giant trusts and depriving workers of the wages needed to buy their output, and the post-1980 era of corporate raiding has indeed seen downsizing and outsourcing of the labor force. But the companies being raided – or defending themselves against raids – are themselves being loaded down with debt. As Marxists would say, the parasites have parasites too. Followers of Henry George saw landlords as gobbling up the economic surplus in the form of land rent, and ownership of land and natural resources has indeed grown rather than shrunk even as economies have been industrialized. But real estate, fuel and mining, along with basic infrastructure monopolies all have become more highly indebted than ever before, so that “rent is for paying interest” has become the new motto. Further to the right on the political spectrum, opponents of government warned about the federal debt “crowding out” private-sector borrowers, while public planning and welfare entail higher taxes. Governments are indeed spending more than ever before, but the largest item in the national budget – larger than the military, education and Social Security together – has become the bailout to the financial institutions that have become the political system’s largest and most focused campaign contributors and lobbyists".........
Michael Hudson The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout: Will the Cure be Worse than the Disease? Counterpunch , Sept. 22, 2008 Available Here	Article	Opening intro:"Saturday’s $700 billion junk mortgage bailout is the largest and worst giveaway since a corrupt Congress gave land grants to the railroad barons a century and a half ago. If it goes through, it will shape the coming century by giving finance unprecedented power over debtors – homebuyers, industry, state and local government, and the federal government as well......"
David Schweickart. Bailout! The Center for Global Justice September 24, 2008 Available Here	Article
James K. Galbraith A Bailout We Don't Need, Washington Post September 25, 2008 Available Here and Here	Newspaper Article	""
Dean Baker Wall St held a gun to our heads Guardian Monday 29 September 2008 Available Here	Newspaper Article	INTRO:"Most authors of books on politics or economics are happy when they get one or two prominent members of Congress to endorse their work. It looks like I'm about to get majorities of both chambers to endorse my book, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (free download available). There is no other way to describe Henry Paulson's $700bn bail-out deal. The point of my book is that the battle between progressives and conservatives is not about a policy of government intervention as opposed to free market policies. Rather, it is a battle between those who want to use the government to benefit the middle and bottom of the income distribution and those who want to use the power of government to redistribute income upward.........."
Michael Hudson Congress Should Bail Out of the Bailout Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many Counterpunch , October 13, 2008 Available Here	Article	""
Steve Keen Not Keen on Bailouts. Bailing out the Titanic with a Thimble Available Here	Article	"The now commonplace observation in the media that this financial crisis is "the worst since the Great Depression" may appear to be hyperbole to many academic economists. It is not—if anything, it may understate the scale of the crisis."
Dean Baker, Economics in a bubble The Guardian 20 April 2009 Available Here	Newspaper article	"The cheerleaders for America's toxic boom want us to bail out US banks. They were wrong then - and are wrong now"
Dean Baker, Was the bank bailout necessary? The Guardian 18 May 2009 Available Here	Newspaper article	"Saving zombie banks supposedly prevented financial collapse. But would letting them fail really have been so bad?"
Michael Hudson How the Financial Reform Plan Protects the Status Quo Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street Counterpunch,June 22 2009 Available Here	Article	EXTRACT: "Mr. Obama has achieved what no Republican could have: rescuing the Bush Administration’s pro-creditor policies that fostered the Bubble Economy in the first place. “Most of the financial sector lobby community is happy with what has emerged,” the Financial Times summarized. A spokesman for the Financial Services Forum, a major Wall Street lobbying organization, called the proposals “careful and balanced.” With such endorsements, victims of predatory lending have good reason to worry. The Obama plan is just the opposite from reforming the financial system along lines that progressive Democrats and other critics have urged....... "
Jan Kregel [Levy Institute, USA] It’s that “vision” thing: Why the bailouts aren’t working, and why a new financial system is needed real-world economics review, issue no. 50 2009 Available Here	Article	EXTRACT (Intro): "Despite the creation of a myriad of Federal Reserve (Fed) special discount window facilities, unlimited swap lending to central banks worldwide, and the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), there appears to be no improvement in financial market conditions. In particular, it is widely lamented that, even with massive capital injections, the banking system is not lending to support the private sector. Comparing the current government response with those to the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Japanese crisis in the 1990s reveals surprising similarities—and the absence of at least three crucial factors. The similarities lie in the initial reliance on monetary and exchange rate policy to reflate asset prices and prevent deflation in goods prices in order to restore normal functioning of the financial system. The differences relate to the absence of (1) direct measures to support bank incomes through interest rate policy, (2) an understanding of the failures of the “modernized” financial system, and thus (3) a clear design for the shape and structure of the financial system that is to replace the current one. The third factor may be the most important deficiency related to attempts to emerge from the current crisis."
CNNMoney.com's bailout tracker Available Here	Website	EXTRACT: "The (US) government is engaged in a far-reaching - and expensive - effort to rescue the economy. Here's how you can keep tabs on the bailouts."
Michael Hudson How a $13 Trillion Cover Story was Written Free money creation to bail out America’s elite financial speculators, but not for Social Security or Medicare June 17, 2011 Available Here	Article	EXTRACT: "The bailout of casino capitalists vested a new ruling class with $13 trillion of public IOUs (including the $5.3 trillion rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) added to the national debt. The recipients have paid out much of this gift in salaries and bonuses, and to “make themselves whole” on their bad risks in default to pay off. An alternative would have been to prosecute them and recover what they had paid themselves as commissions for loading the economy with debt. ..... ..... Without the bailout, the gambling arm of Wall Street would have collapsed, but the “real” economy’s everyday banking and insurance operations could have continued. The bottom 99 percent of the U.S. economy would have recovered with only a speed bump to clean out the congestion at the top, and the government would have ended up in control of the biggest and most reckless banks and AIG – as it did in any case. The government could have used its equity ownership and control of the banks to write down mortgages to reflect market conditions. It could have left families owning their homes at the same cost they would have had to pay in rent – the economic definition of equilibrium in property prices. The government-owned “too big to fail” banks could have been told to refrain from gambling on derivatives, from lending for currency and commodity speculation, and from making takeover loans and other predatory financial practices. Public ownership would have run the banks like savings banks or post office banks rather than gambling schemes fueling the international carry trade (computer-driven interest rate and currency arbitrage) that has no linkage to the production-and-consumption economy. The government could have used its equity ownership and control of the banks to provide credit and credit card services as the “public option.” Credit is a form of infrastructure, and such public investment is what enabled the United States to undersell foreign economies in the 19th and 20th centuries despite its high wage levels and social spending programs. As Simon Patten, the first economics professor at the nation’s first business school (the Wharton School) explained, public infrastructure investment is a “fourth factor of production.” It takes its return not in the form of profits, but in the degree to which it lowers the economy’s cost of doing business and living. Public investment does not need to generate profits or pay high salaries, bonuses and stock options, or operate via offshore banking centers. ...."