Article: Reject the Bail Out-- Re-Invent The Lending System to Maximize Liquidity

Now is the best opportunity congress has ever had to do something extraordinary and visionary to make US business and finance better. My business and contract experience, doing business with billion dollar companies, negotiating six and seven figure agreements, is about six zeroes short of the Paulson proposal. But the essential rules stay the same. One thing the best attorney I ever hired advised me was that it's always best to write the first draft of an agreement or contract being negotiated. If you do the first draft, the other guy has to react to your proposal. Paulson's proposals should be thrown out altogether. The congress should come together with the intention to come up with a response to the financial liquidity crisis. That's what this financial emergency is all about-- fear that lending will come to a halt. They should keep in mind, at the highest level, Bernie Sanders observation that any company that is so big that we can afford not to let it survive is too big to exist. In other words-- good riddance to these leviathan dinosaurs. Any solution should hammer nails in their coffins, not create ways to keep them lingering amongst us, like the last dodo bird. The reason Bernanke an Paulson are uttering solemn apocalyptic warnings is they saw lending capital drying up last week. The brink they saw the US facing was one where money for loans wasn't going to come forward. People couldn't borrow money to buy cars, houses, invest in business projects. So they came up with their $700 billion plan to prime the pump, to rescue gamblers who shot for big odds in terms of returns on their investments. Wouldn't it be nice if we could go to a casino or a race track, gamble away all our money and then be told we're going to get it back? That's what Paulson and Bernanke are basically doing with the investors who are facing huge losses. I say, let them lose the money. Remember, there are a lot of banks and finance companies which are not in trouble. They took less risks. They rejected bad credit applications that these failing companies accepted. These survivor companies-- the ones that made smart, more cautious decisions and took less risks, should be the companies the US congress rewards. They should be the companies Paulson and Bernanke go to for raising the liquidity in the lending arena. If the US is going to pump hundreds of billions into the lending system to keep the money coming, then it should work with the responsible companies that have shown they know how to handle credit successfully. Another thing I learned in my small way, dealing with a multi billion dollar company was that you use the leverage you have to get your best deal. Congress now holds all the cards. The democrats control both houses. They don't have to take that first draft Paulson sent them. They can come back with a totally different proposal. One thing's clear, as the Wall Street Journal has already said, Wall Street, as we've known it, is dead. Along with it is the right wing mantras-- the market knows best, the market decides. The whole Friedman Chicago School of Economics model-- that regulation is toxic for the economy-- is clearly dead in the water, though the Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein has so brilliantly described is clearly at work. That puts congress in a challenging position. They're in the driver's seat but there may not be any navigation charts. They are in for the most part unexplored territory. That requires visionary and courageous leadership. We have not seen that amongst the leaders of the Democratic party. This is no time to tweak or minimally modify. It is a time to take bold, dynamic steps forward. Where will they find such visionary leadership? One person I'd start with is David Korten, author of The Post-Corporate World; Life After Capitalism. So I called him and sure enough, he'd been up half the night, writing an article on how this is the ideal time to go with something new, for mainstreet and the people. I'm very worried that the Democrats, pariculary Pelosi and Reid, will do what they've done so many times. Ralph Nader described it well this morning, "This is posturing. They ask tough questions.Then they cave." This is no time for caving. It is time for tough negotiations and the first step is to come up with a vision of a new way of doing things. Since even John McCain now, for the moment, supports regulation, we can assume that a reasonable regulatory system will be involved. While we should aim for creating a new, better solution, I don't think, in the very short term, we have to re-invent the wheel. We need to find, for the short term, existing models that have stood up to the housing price crash and subprime mortage crises. We need to find companies that have set examples of what worked. While we're at it, we must move away from the top down approach, with a handful of massive companies forged from serial mergers and acquisitions-- a top-heavy model-- and replace it with a lot of small businesses. Let the treasury work with a lot of small businesses. Bottom-line, it looks like the mass of AMericans oppose handing any money at all to Henry Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs-- one of the oligarchs who built the system that failed. Congress needs to bring in fresh ideas and approach the problem of maximizing liquidity, not rescuing failed corporations. The sooner our legislators get it, the better off America will be. I'll be interviewing Senator Sanders and David Korten tonight, 9-10 PM EST, Wednesday, on my radio show, The Rob Kall Show. Click here for details. An introduction to David Korten on youtube