Nationalize the Banks

Editor,

Fire the fools who dabbled in high-risk, high-return phony baloney, and use the banks' existing employees and infrastructure to perform the function banks are chartered to perform: loaning money to keep the wheels of American commerce turning -- not chasing the most profit they can possibly amass for themselves, the public be damned.

Paulson's $700 billion can be used to put unemployed people to work repairing roads, bridges, sewer systems, water systems, levees, schools, hospitals -- all of the infrastructure that the Bush administration dropped on the floor because the super-rich have no use for it.

If it's OK for hard-working American taxpayers to lose their incomes and their homes, it is OK for for their bosses, who steered our country onto the rocks, to loose theirs.

And by all means beware the geniuses who are already trying to sell you that American workers have to accept wages of 50 cents an hour with no benefits to fix the mess those geniuses created.

re: "The Bailout’s Next 60 Days" (11/17/2008)