Nader knocks bailout bill, urges start from scratch

By Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO — The financial-markets bailout bill that the House rejected Monday should be "scrapped forever" and replaced with mortgage aid for struggling homeowners and prosecution of Wall Street robber barons, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Tuesday.

Nader began a daylong Bay Area blitz with a news conference outside the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco with running mate and former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as well as "peace mom" activist Cindy Sheehan, an independent congressional candidate challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Federal Reserve is "a secret government within a government, it is out of control, it is not accountable to Congress and never has been," Nader said, demanding such accountability as well as annual audits. Without such control and transparency, he said, the Federal Reserve will continue to do banks' bidding, leading to a devalued dollar, higher interest rates and a declining quality of life for most Americans.

Meanwhile, he said, Congress should hold public hearings on this financial-markets meltdown's causes and potential cures, rather than rush to judgment on a bailout plan advanced by "the most criminally recidivist administration in this country's history."

Congress' adaptation of the Bush administration's plan amounted to nothing more than "sugarcoating," Nader said: Its promises of taxpayer equity, transparency, oversight and accountability are "full
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of holes."

He wants stock warrants so taxpayers can make some money back if these businesses flourish again; no lobbying rights for bailed-out companies; no golden parachutes or get-out-of-jail-free cards for guilty executives; public hearings on everything; letting below-median-value homeowners facing foreclosure rent-to-own their homes at fair market prices; making the Federal Reserve into a Cabinet position accountable to Congress; and a securities speculation tax to relieve tax pressure on the working middle class while discouraging excessive speculation.

Congress will act in the public interest "only when they fear the people more than the corporations," Nader said, claiming that "without the rising tide of support for third-party and independent candidates in this country, this margin of defeat for the bailout bill in the House would not have occurred."

Nader said Pelosi lost touch with her progressive roots as she gained power, and now should fear Sheehan's challenge: "Cindy Sheehan will topple incumbent Speaker Nancy Pelosi if Nancy Pelosi continues to put Wall Street ahead of San Francisco, California and its peoples."

Sheehan decried Pelosi's "urgency to bail out corporations when there are thousands of people in San Francisco who are on the streets, who are homeless" and jobless because of corporate greed. She said the nation needs a "gurgle-up solution, not a trickle-down. "... We're tired of being trickled upon by the corporate interests, by Congress, by George Bush."

And Gonzalez said the media have been too quick to report the $700 billion bailout as the nation's only option.

"That's not the case," he said. "Let's see this unfold. Let's see the market correct itself." And if Wall Street billionaires suffer, he added, so be it.

Nader was scheduled to attend a fundraising luncheon at midday Tuesday in San Francisco and a rally Tuesday afternoon at San Francisco State. Then he was to address the Commonwealth Club of California on Tuesday evening; and speak at a rally at Oakland's Grand Lake Theater on Tuesday night.