The correct solution.

Editor,

The correct solution is not to buy bad assets from financial firms. It is to make those assets good by providing a mechanism whereby distressed homeowners can renegotiate their mortgages to terms they can afford and therefore pay.

To avert the purported mushroom cloud of a Main Street without access to credit, Washington should loan $700 billion to small businesses to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

Wall Street does not produce wealth. It swallows it, concentrates it in the hands of a criminal few, and spits back a mirage which, as in the current crisis, always collapses at everyone else's expense. Not one cent should go to Wall Street. All relief should go to homeowners, people who have lost their homes, small business, and the unemployed.

re: "What’s Worse Than a Flawed Bailout?" (9/30/2008)