Read the complete transcript.
GOV. JON CORZINE (D-NJ): The answer to that has to be, unfortunately, yes. When you have destruction of value that we've seen, $8 trillion from the high of the stock market a year ago, 4 trillion in the last 10 days, people understand that they've lost protection of their retirement savings and other things, and that erodes confidence. And so they're going to spend less and be a little less proactive about how they go out and spend scarce dollars. And that's going to hurt the economy, slows production, has an unfortunate negative impact that I think has yet to be fully appreciated in the real economy. We've seen, obviously, the decline in homes, but now I think you're going to see rising levels of unemployment, unfortunately, and that, that's, that's a real problem as we go ahead in the months ahead.
MR. BROKAW: Congressman, do you see any light at the end of the tunnel?
[...]GOV. CORZINE: Well, I agree with the idea that we ought to stabilize housing prices. I don't agree with the idea that we ought to be bailing out the banks that made the loans, as I think Rob would recognize on Tuesday night when Senator McCain talked about a program to bail out the mortgages. That, that sounded good, that was part of the $700 billion program to start with. On Tuesday, he came out with a program that said that we're going to pay the full value for those mortgages, bailing out the banks that actually made those loans. I think that's a horrible idea. The taxpayers will end up underwriting it. What we need to do is restructure mortgages. There's a couple of ways to do that, change the bankruptcy laws or you could actually buy mortgages at their market value today and then go in and restructure them with the individuals. And yes, we ought to be stabilizing housing prices. I think actually we could even buy houses, like they did back in the--in the '30s under the RFC program, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. But the way that Senator McCain has done it is sort of really messed up on how it would actually impact folks.
[...]GOV. CORZINE: Now is the time for steady leadership. We can't have a new economic program each morning we wake up. That's what's been going on. Unfortunately, with regard to how the bailout package was put together and the whole structure in Washington, and it's certainly the case with Senator McCain's various proposals. This mortgage program that we talked about was included in the Frank-Dodd proposal, it was included in the $700 billion, and there have been changes; but it is still the basic, we ought to help mortgages. Now we're coming up with a new plan. What Senator Obama has talked about and is absolutely is essential is make sure that we use thoughtfully this $700 billion, including, by the way, investing in banks. Direct investment will stabilize--they call it recapitalization--stabilize the banks. Then he has talked about let's make sure that we have middle class tax cuts. He's been talking about that for months. Ninety-five percent of the folks, about 90 percent will get tax cuts, 95 will get no increases, including on capital gains above--below $250,000.
And then, what is maybe most important, we need a real economic stimulus. We're in what you call a liquidity trap. You can, you can, you can lead a horse to water, but it doesn't drink. Right now nobody has confidence to do things. We need to be putting demand into the system. That means infrastructure--build highways, build schools, build our energy system so that we can actually create jobs, get people back to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment