Too much on the line to rush Wall Street fix

Wall Street and Main Street collided in Doral, Fla., amid honking horns and a smattering of protesters Tuesday outside the Federal Reserve Bank.

The protesters want homeowners to share in a piece of the bailout that Congress is debating to save Wall Street bankers from their subprime madness.

And why not?

Facing the biggest bailout since the Great Depression, members of Congress in both parties are working feverishly to figure out how pulling up Wall Street by its bootstraps can be explained to the people back home who long ago lost their boots and socks to a struggling economy.

If you’re not facing foreclosure, you’re still getting whacked by gas prices, insurance and property taxes at a time when your house has lost substantial value and inflation has gobbled up salary increases. That’s if you’re lucky enough to get a raise.

Now prepare to hoist up Wall Street.

We are stuck with a quickie solution to the festering boil of anything-goes deregulation and ignore-the-rules oversight during the last eight years. It’s not just greed that consumed the bankers and mortgage industry. It’s a lack of regulatory control that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told senators Tuesday would plunge the economy even deeper. And they’re not loony lefties - they’re Bush appointees.

Democratic leaders in Congress are fighting their political instincts to simply blame Bush in an election year and wait it out. So they’ve bought into the bailout - with some sensible caveats that would help working people facing foreclosure to keep their homes.

But the most conservative Republicans prefer to keep singing off-key from their deregulation hymn book. Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, called the bailout "financial socialism" and "un-American."

Socialism? Yes, of sorts, but it’s not un-American. Giving free land to settlers could be described as socialism, but it was the rugged American way that opened the West. The Republican Party promised a chicken in every pot in 1928 to get their man Herbert Hoover elected. Then came the Great Depression, and FDR’s New Deal.

To do nothing now is not an option. If people don’t trust banks or the stock market, then our economy collapses.

Trust, after all, is the basis for capitalism in a mixed economy - trust and regulatory oversight. We trust the markets to set prices based on supply and demand. We trust consumers to point out defective products and abuses. And we trust the government to regulate capitalism’s excesses.

Well, we trusted too much. Without sufficient regulation, we invited abuses.

For years, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been warning about predatory subprime lenders steering first-time home buyers to adjustable mortgages. On Thursday, ACORN protesters in Doral called for the $700 billion bailout to include relief for homeowners facing foreclosure.

In Washington, Republicans like Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida joined sponsors of bipartisan amendments that would prohibit banking executives whose companies would be rescued by the taxpayer from getting golden parachutes.

Good ideas from almost every political corner. But with $700 billion and as much as $1 trillion on the line, taxpayers deserve more than a rush job in Washington after eight years of laissez-faire do-nothingness. It’s a matter of trust.

Myriam Marquez is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132. Readers may write to her via e-mail at mmarquez@miamiherald.com.

(c) 2008, The Miami Herald

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