A Wall Street step in the right direction

Fix No. 1: Start the 'perp walks'
No one on Main Street trusts Wall Street anymore, and you can't blame them after what's happened. This is a huge problem because the Street is supposed to channel money to the entrepreneurs who invest it to create businesses and jobs that keep our economy rollicking. This won't happen when so many people prefer cash to stocks. To restore confidence, we need lots of "perp walks" to prove that those who committed fraud are being rooted out and punished. Not long ago, after another set of scandals, seeing ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and former Adelphia Communications chief John Rigas paraded on TV in handcuffs helped restore confidence that the system would be cleaned up.
We need the same assurances now. News releases about what the FBI may do aren't enough. President Bush needs to direct his attorney general to set up a task force that draws on the resources of the main law enforcement and regulatory bodies, just as he set up a corporate-fraud task force to deal with the last round of fraudulent behavior. The first of 5 necessary steps toward stability.

Joe is lazy?

I agree that people should work for their money. Do something. Anything. Does the rich include Joe Lunchbucket in as one of those lazy do-nothings? He lost his house maybe, and his job due to the greed and corruption on Wall Street and Every Street- he is ready, willing, and able to work but there is no work available, due to no fault of his own. The deregulators allowed Wall Street and the banking industry to run wild without any oversight or responsibility until they ran it into the ground. Now they want Joe and his fellow taxpayers to bail their sorry butts out ! Hypocrites who want NO government interference UNTIL they have robbed and plundered everything they can, getting wealthy in the process, with NO concern for the possible effects on anybody else. THEN they want us to bail them out. Those crooks and greedy SOBs need jail time, at least.

The spectacular collapse of two big investment banks — and the scramble by a major insurance company to stay afloat — has many on Wall Street and Main Street wondering: Is this as bad as it gets? The answer is that nobody knows — not the heads of surviving banks, Treasury officials or policymakers at the Federal Reserve. The reason is that the true value of the investments being held by banks and other financial institutions cannot be known until home prices stop declining and the job market stabilizes. Until that happens, more losses are inevitable. The value of MS homes continue to drop as more houses are put on the market due to unemployment. THIS is a time to take on MORE debt? Ridiculous. Absurd.