L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll: Only 31% favor bailout

News item from Bloomberg News tonight:

Americans oppose government rescues of ailing financial companies by a decisive margin, and blame Wall Street and President George. W. Bush for the credit crisis.            

By a margin of 55 percent to 31 percent, Americans say it's not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayer dollars, even if their collapse could damage the economy, according to the latest Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll.

Here's how the Los Angeles Times reports the same findings:

Most Americans don't believe the government has responsibility for bailing out financial firms with taxpayer money, a core part of the rescue plan Congress is considering to halt the near-meltdown of the nation's financial markets, a Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

Reluctance to use public money to rescue private firms runs across the population, the poll found: Democrats and Republicans, high-income and low-income families alike.

Two cents: The poll was conducted from Friday through Monday.  Most Americans probably didn't learn until Sunday, or Monday, that Treasury was demanding $700 billion without meaningful Congressional oversight. My sense is that the bailout is becoming less popular each day, and that a poll taken this week would show even deeper opposition to the original Paulson plan.

Does it make the bailout more acceptable if you add on aid to homeowners and limits on executive pay? That's certainly the way Congressional leadership thinks, but I'm not sure most Americans go along.

— Peter Viles

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to Peter Viles

Comments

[The Original RZ]

Adding on aid to homeowners makes it even less acceptable to me! The only part of this I like is the limit on executive pay, though I doubt that'll fly.

[LA-Architect]

I am adamantly opposed to this bailout. This one issue is where we ALL come together in unity AGAINST it. Democrats and Republicans are not THAT stupid!!!

What I don't understand is why are we getting back on the CREDIT merry go round again? The credit implosion is the direct result of the false economy of the Bush years. I refuse to let my children pick up the cost of those idiots who HELOC'd all their supposed equity to buy Hummers and other equallly ridiculous things.

[The Original RZ]

"In protest, I think October 1st should be National Don't Pay Your Mortgage day. I intend to NOT pay my mortgage on October 1st. If all mortgage holders in America did this, do you think we might send a message to King Paulson?"

NoMoreMortgagePayments: I think I'm missing something here. I don't understand how this will help anything, or what message you are intending on sending to Paulson. People who can afford their mortgages will be paying and should do so since it's a debt that they owe. Those who can't afford it are already defaulting. Can you explain how this would pan out?

[LA-renter]

Before becoming a beloved Dodger, Manny was fretting in Boston --he felt unfairly compensated. Manny's felt this way for a number of years. So, two years ago, the Red Sox put Manny on waivers. Any team could have him plus his contract without any other conditions. No bite. The Red Sox showed Manny his true value was his contract (or less).

Could Paulson and Bernanke use the failure of this bill to show Wall Streeter, and their vocal advocate Cramer, that there's no white knight coming to the rescue?

Maybe Wall Street just needs a nudge to accept its fate.

[Nick]

As for the polling, I think the result (like in most polls) is probably highly dependent on the questions. It's easy for those of us who have taken informal polls to wonder how the percentage against isn't closer to 100%, but remember that the question could be very "creative". For example, they could ask something similar to what was quoted in the Bloomberg article, like "do you want the government to save the economy?"

I think most people would want the government to preserve the economy, the problem is that the news organizations turns that into "in favor of a bailout", when in reality a bailout is probably the worst possible thing the government could do to the economy, both immediately and in terms of lasting effects. Unless the pollsters are asking direct unambiguous questions, the results are probably not going to match what's obvious to everyone. In this case, in case any pollsters are watching, I'd suggest something like: "would you favor the government taking $700 billion of your money and giving it to criminals, fraudsters, corporate insiders, crooks, and scam artists to reward them for creating the current housing market situation?"

Good luck finding even 10% of the country who would favor the bailout when it's accurately described, without all the BS spin.

[Nevermind]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/dirty-secret-of-the-bailo_n_128294.html

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

If you poll people with this question, you will likely get 30% to say yes:

'Is the Earth flat?'

So, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that 31% favoring bailout in this poll.

It's just a statistical quirk.

[jb]

We need to make it clear that CEO pay is only one of the many requirements to get a bailout.

- all upper management pay limited (and all current bonuses culled - Lehman just set aside 2.5B for bonuses = 250k each!)

- a share in future profits by the taxpayers until the tab paid off - we flatly reject private gains and public losses

[mike]

since when does the government within the last 8 years consider the wants of the people of this country.

[I vote yes]

"Every day that passes without cataclysm... Every morning that starts without gunfire on the streets and martial music on the radio.. Chip, chip, chips away at any residual support."

Well there wasn't gunfire on the streets and martial music on the radio during the Great Depression, either, but that doesn't mean the country wasn't economically devastated.

You'll change your tune when your company can't expand or make a profit, and has to lay you off and your unemployment runs out. Then you'll be the one screaming for a bailout from your old friends in Washington. Oh, but that will be so much different, won't it?

[DavieL]

I read in the nyt that Sweden had a similar problem and fashioned a solution that was partially funded by the shareholders - and in this case I think the executives and administrators who ran the ship aground ought to bear some financial responsibility as well. Let's have the perpetrators pay for it. This welfare for the rich sucks.

[annoyed]

All of us have to make sure, including Peter, to refer to these people as LOANOWNERS, not homeowners!! Especially when we contact our senators and reps.

They don't own anything but debt and should not be bailed out just as much as the wall street and the banks should not be bailed out.

[annoyed]

There are so many people waiting to buy at reasonable prices that I don't think the economy would collapse. The real estate market just needs to correct itself. Why doesn't one single Senator mention this. Oh right because they're CLUELESS. Don't get me started on the media.

[scott]

Stop the Bailout! Our founders never intended for the government to be able to abuse taxpayers in this way.

I'm a Republican who believes that the Paulson-Bernacke bailout plan rewards bad behavior. It distorts the market in an attempt to ensure that stock prices can only go up - not down. Markets won't work that way! Bad decisions must have consequences. There will be pain when the market adjusts and the prices for these stocks go to their proper value, but that is how markets must work. Period. It is immoral to place the ineptitude of Wall Street decision makers onto the backs of hard working American taxpayers. This bailout will drive up fuel prices by again devaluing the dollar, the currency in which oil is traded worldwide. It sticks it to the middle class. The middle class didn't share in the excessive profits over the past decade brought about by these unscrupulous loan bundling schemes, but now wealthy Wall Street leaders and investors want the middle class to come to their rescue. NO.

Call your members of Congress today, and tell them to vote against any permutation of this massive taxpayer bailout. The future of the market system and of America's hard working taxpaying citizens depends on stopping this bailout.

[LA-renter]

I vote yes,

Exactly!

If I get laid off, and my unemployment runs out, I (and other affected people) will be demanding action from Washington...

but not a bailout for investment banks!

How is it this bailout or nothing?

No good will come from any financial linkage between the US treasury and these Wall Street sharks.

Like the aquarium says: Don't feed the animals!

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

If the choice to avoid a depression is

1) bailing out rich Wall Street speculators

or

2) building more roads to nowhere, more bridges to nowhere, a la Franklin Roosevelt,

I'd vote for the latter - it has been tested and proven to work.

[Chris Pepper]

A good friend emailed me.....

They scared I us into going to war with Iraq and now they are trying to scare us into giving 1 trillion to their friends. Ridiculous.

[LieDetector]

To those few people who do support the Paulson bailout plan I ask why do you assume that the alternative is to do absolutely nothing and watch the economy slip into a never ending abyss? That is nothing but intellectual dishonesty and fear mongering.

[Nelcisco]

Puck says:" the same people that scream no bail out will be the ones screaming bloody murder when the economy tanks".
This is why we're in a no win situation, how about this, the people that are screaming for a bailout maybe the same people that'll be screaming why TF did we, the tax payers, allow this?!!!

[The Original RZ]

I vote yes,
It's not as if I enjoy seeing other suffer, or suffering myself for that matter. But one key reason why I'm against a bailout is that w/out suffering, those who have had a hand in this financial mess (and there's a lot of folks from the government to the corporate level down to the consumers) will not learn from their mistakes. Economic devastation is never an ideal situation, but at least those who live through it will change their behavior for the better and we'd be more likely to avoid a similar financial mess in the future. A bailout will simply reward those at fault and another economic crisis will happen again way too soon.

[LA-renter]

...Can I change my mind?

Just think. What if Paulson and Bernanke are right... this time. (Heck, they've been wrong so long, they're due.):

What if the US treasury made some real money on this deal?

Future President Obama could run a surplus, provide health insurance for all, and cut EVERYONE'S taxes... even super-rich folks (because they created our newfound fortune).

Deregulation will rule the day... creating new messes... and thus new revenue opportunities for the treasury.

Climb aboard!

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

Does the plan still include bailing out foreign banks?

If it does, I hope we will get some discount on cuckoo clocks from the Swiss and we will give them our cuckoos...for free, as a throw in.

Quid pro quo, you might say.

Cuckoos plus bailout for your cuckoo clocks.

[NV]

bailout or not the economy is going down the toilet. just think of what's left of our economy: we don't manufacture anything anymore, we buy everything we need from China. We don't harvest our fields anymore, that's the job reserved for illegals south of border, we just drive around our SUV to burn gas, that's the patriotic thing. The only thing we still do is create paper profits (1/3 of national GDP) from Wall Street banks, but it all goes to those 100, 000 people that live in Manhattan. It's their party and if they want to keep at it they should put their money in it.
I'll say Paulson has some balls ...

[DontBelieveTheirLies]

Funny how the same people who said that the economy was fundamentally sound (while prices for everything skyrocketed), or who were saying as little as six months ago that the crisis was contained, are now threatening the American taxpayer with losing their jobs, their savings and everything if we don't payoff the financial sector now.

Who do these bloodsuckers think they are?

If we don't do as we're told, maybe the economy will indeed collapse and there will be a world of hurt for everyone. Who knows? But I'm not sure why I should believe them this time after all of their utterly, completely wrong predictions up to this point.

But one thing is certain - I sure as hell ain't going to give in to these bastards with their sickeningly obvious attempt to hold a gun to our heads.

It's just unbelievable what they're trying to pull on us. If more people understood what was going on, there would be real trouble. In other countries, at other times, the bloodsuckers don't get away with this sort of raping of an economy. They're lucky, for now.

[the problemwithcaring]

The televised testimonies of Comrades Bernanke and Paulson are fascinating.

For one thing, their jobs are to beg broke American middle-class taxpayers to make whole some of the riches and most reckless people that have ever walked face the earth, all while those very taxpayers struggle to keep their own household budgets in black.

Also, the testimonies are a lot like those given by Alberto Gonzalez and the Department of Justice. Instead of being on the defensive though, the Bush administration is on the offensive again with their familiar out-of-control fear-mongering. "We must prevent a Nuclear Annihilation, er, the next Great Depression!" In just a matter of weeks, previously unimaginable sums – like the $500 billion dollars we shelled out for Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns and AIG – are being dismissed as "band-aids." We are starting to get you, Henry - until the well-off friends on Wall-Street are “confident” Uncle Sam’s guarantying their Christmas bonuses, there will continue to be a “growing crisis.”

Yet, when asked specifically what that Crisis would entail for the average American, all we hear from Bernanke, the Bush & Co, the MSM is the threat that "credit will constrict."

And that is what really rubs me. I for one, do not see what is so wrong with telling a McDonald's franchiser wanting to expand, a city government wanting a sports stadium, a young family wanting a new car, or a university wanting to increase enrollment, that sometimes borrowing huge sums of money, irrespective of the ability to repay, is not an option.

Why is it that for the American economy to grow, it has to be all-credit, all the time?