Everytime, they call it a deal and not a proposal.

Regardless, this is basically what they are talking about.

Quote:

The plan calls for the Treasury Department to buy deeply distressed mortgage-backed securities and other bad debts held by banks and other investors. The money should help troubled lenders make new loans and keep credit lines open. The government would later try to sell the discounted loan packages at the best possible price.

At the insistence of House Republicans, some of the program's $700 billion would be devoted to a program that would encourage holders of distressed mortgage-backed securities to keep them and buy government insurance to cover defaults.

The proposed legislation also calls for the financial sector to help make up the difference if the government does not recoup its investment in five years, the official said, but details were unclear.

Also, the government would receive stock warrants in return for the bailout relief, giving taxpayers a chance to share in financial companies' future profits.

To help struggling homeowners, the plan would require the government to try renegotiating the bad mortgages it acquires with the aim of lowering borrowers' monthly payments so they can keep their homes.

Money for the rescue plan would be phased in. The first $350 billion would be available as soon as the president requested it. Congress could try to block later amounts if it believed the program was not working. The president could veto such a move, however, requiring extra large margins in the House and Senate to override.

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Opinion:

Concept behind the plan is wrong.

The government is attempting to provide the banking idustry the money to artificially keep property values high.

At the same time they will reinflate commodity prices.

The only thing they aren't trying to reinflate is worker incomes.

Instead of this plan the government needs to:

-- Raise what bank accounts are insured for to stop a run on banks.
-- Provide funds to make sure pension funds do not underfunded by the economic turmoil in the markets.
-- Use government and treasury deposits to hold off the failure of banks that might otherwise be solvent.
-- Use normal, constitutional means, to shore up the money supply in sectors where the money supply seems to be drying up. This is through Treasury Bonds, Fed Purchases, Government Deposit.

------------------Deal with core economic problems:
------------------Place a 30% duty on all imports to start dealing with the trade deficit.
------------------Raise the top tax back to 70% but only tax the part of income deemed excessive. In other words, everyone should pay the same tax for the first x amount earned. Everyone should pay the same tax on the second amount y earned. You don't unconstitutionally cap salaries. You tax excessive salaries. It doesn't matter whether it is a football player earning too much money or a corporate big wig making too much money, you tax all the excesses.
------------------Provide bottom level, easy entry and easy exit, bottom level government jobs. I am not totally comfortable with this either, but I think it is the only way to provide money to homeless to stop begging and to provide money to families whose budgets are being broken and to make sure young people trying to earn money for education or able to get a job that pays. This is also a good way to provide people who have trouble getting jobs the core background they need to prove themselves to get a job in the private sector. The system should not be designed to lock people into poverty but to give them a lift up.
------------------Help people save money. Isn't people saving money and putting money into banks the way to provide capital. Exactly how does trying to get more people to start back borrowing money and going deeper in to debt help make the economy more stable. Perhaps the best way to start this is to clamp down on credit card companies acting like loan sharks.