You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (418)

PLAYS: (934)

David Brooks excuses Liz Cheney and his "friend" Bill Kristol's fear mongering ad by saying we've been too mean to Dick Cheney. Instead of actually addressing how corrosive their attacks have been, Brooks tries to write it off as politics as usual. Sorry David, but it's not politics as usual unless you think the sort of rhetoric used by McCarthy should be considered part of our civil discourse now.

Transcript via PBS.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go to another disagreement...

JIM LEHRER: ... the so-called al-Qaida seven. Liz Cheney and her group have criticized some Justice Department lawyers because they once represented some Guantanamo detainees.

Where do you come down on that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think the ad, which sort of accused whose values do they have, do they have al-Qaida or Taliban values, I thought that was tremendously unfortunate.

I mean, it's just part of a long range of corrosive language. And, to be fair to Liz Cheney, if you Google Taliban and Liz Cheney, millions of people have called her a member of the Taliban and made similar charges. But it's a series of steps away from the, you know, normal way any of us should be talking to each other.

MARK SHIELDS: The idea of the al-Qaida seven, I mean, there are those of us who are old enough to remember the Chicago Seven, when incitement to riot and the seven protesters, militants, whatever you want to call them, disrupted as a matter of course, and it became a famous court case at the time and trial.

I just thought it was more than unfortunate. I thought it was offensive. And I thought it was, frankly, un-American, in the true sense of the word.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (58)

PLAYS: (124)

From The PBS Newhour, more news on how Goldman Sachs is profiting from our tax dollars.

PAUL SOLMAN: Across from the construction site that was once the World Trade Center, Goldman Sachs' new world headquarters.

To help foot the $2-plus billion construction bill, Goldman got New York City and State to bless a $1.65 billion tax-free so-called liberty bond issue, plus another $66 million in job grants, tax exemptions, and energy discounts.

And, yet, the same firm just reported the most profitable year in Wall Street history, prompting protests when it channeled most of those profits to pay salaries and bonuses. It was a year of horrible P.R., which saw Goldman and its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, vilified...

LLOYD BLANKFEIN, CEO, Goldman Sachs: Everybody have that now?

PAUL SOLMAN: ... by everyone from passersby commenting on painter Geoffrey Raymond's portrait, to Glenn Beck on the right blasting Goldman's profits...

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (532)

PLAYS: (720)

I'm not sure why Rep. Garrett thinks that making sure the banks turn a profit is going to assure they'll lend to anyone. It hasn't worked so far. His solution seems to be just to let them fail and take the economy down again if they do rather than regulating them. The Wonk Room has more--GOP Criticizes Obama Plan Because It Would ‘Confine The Banks And Their Ability To Make Profits’:

In the wake of the Obama administration’s announcement yesterday that it will seek new bank regulations “in the spirit of Glass-Steagall,” one line of thought posited that Republicans had been placed into a box, as they wouldn’t want to give the administration a victory on regulatory reform, but they also wouldn’t want to seem too friendly towards the banks.

But mass opposition has been the staple of the Republican strategy towards Obama so far, and early indications are that they won’t be any more helpful with the plan to reform the banks.

[...]

Garrett’s statement, meanwhile, basically implies that a profit earned in any fashion — whether its by ripping of unknowing consumers or gambling with federally insured money — is alright by him. But it’s not really the level of profits that we’re talking about here at all — it’s the way in which they were earned. Profits of the sort Wall Street has been seeing in recent years are only achievable by amassing a huge amount of risk, which is backed by American taxpayers because the institutions involved are systemically important. It’s the merging off traditional deposit banking and commercial lending with a hedge fund mentality that is the problem Obama’s plan seeks to address.

Transcript via PBS below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (547)

PLAYS: (3044)

As much as I disagree with them on so many issues, I'm glad to see David Brooks and the Wall Street Journal actually calling this terrorism fear mongering out for what it is. Playing politics to pretend there's ever any hope of catching everyone that might slip through the cracks with any security measures that are taken with our airlines.

Brooks reiterated some of what he wrote in his column at the New York Times during this interview on The Newshour on PBS. I'm quite sure the right won't be happy with them for acknowledging that the Muslim, socialist, left wing, terrorist loving, weak on national defense, non-waterboarding President Obama and his TSA might not be able to catch every one of those Underwear Bombers unless you want to do a cavity search on everyone that flies on an airplane performed personally by Dick Cheney... but somehow I think Brooks and the Wall Street Journal will survive the outrage on the right and continue to be a souce for more hackery we post about here later.

Brooks: They do a pretty good job of reducing the risk of terrorist attack. Occasionally, somebody gets through. That is going to inevitably happen.

We should have some sort of steady, level-headed response. That is the sign of a resilient nation. We don't have it. We have had the last week of the whole country going -- or at least the punditocracy -- going into semi-hysteria over this. And it's just not the sign of a serious country. And I think nobody has covered themselves with glory in all this.

John Amato:

I really hope I'm wrong, but it's probably going to happen again unfortunately. There are too many variables to control for a terrorist to always fail, but as a society we can react with maturity and a level head instead of the knee jerk FOX News led--GOP fearmongering assholes, who's only mission is to attack a Democratic president at every turn. Too bad our media doesn't use sensibility when something bad happens. Instead they point their microphones immediately at the first right wing hack that has nothing constructive to say.

Transcript via PBS below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (577)

PLAYS: (1007)

From The PBS Newshour Jan. 1, 2009. Why does it look like India is doing a better job of taking care of their poor with making sure they have eye care than we are in the United States? This reminds me of the free health clinics that used to be reserved for third world countries going on across the country here. How pathetic is it that the richest country in the world is not doing a better job of tending for those who are the most in need instead of those profiting off of the sick?

I can only imagine what the Republicans would be calling a similar system that grew as large as this one in the U.S. Maybe a socialist plot to make sure old people don't go blind? Who knows. I'm sure of one thing. If an outfit got this big and was cutting into industry profits, they'd be finding a way to demonize them. And they’d be aided and abetted by their Conserva-Dem cohorts who are just as bad.

Friday on the NewsHour, a second look at a Fred de Sam Lazaro report from India on the Aravind system of eye hospitals and clinics, the largest such system in the world. These clinics subsidize sight-restoring surgery for impoverished patients and provide top-of-the-line care for patients who can pay.

Founded in 1976, Aravind has treated some 27 million patients and operated on 3.4 million, mostly to reverse blindness caused by cataracts. The primary surgery now costs just a few dollars more than a meal at McDonald's.

Transcript via PBS.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Aravind is the largest eye care center in the world. The surgical facilities are as modern, the error rate as low as any place in America.

The big difference with Aravind is that its patients are among the world's poorest people, who rarely get treated for eye diseases. Globally, 45 million people have preventable or reversible blindness. Twelve million are in India alone, where the extreme sun and genetics are blamed.

Many people lose their sight and livelihood by their early 50s. Aravind's business success and social mission have long made it a model in public health textbooks. Twenty years ago, this much younger reporter came to the ancient temple city of Madurai, where Aravind was founded by Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. Everyone called him Dr. V.

He retired from a government hospital in 1976 and set out to tackle what he called disabling cataract blindness.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (523)

PLAYS: (914)

As Steve Benen noted this is a better answer than the "I didn't campaign on the public option" nonsense which I thought was silly and insulting. People who've been following the process understand the difference between what you'd like to get passed and what's achievable with this Congress. President Obama said he got 95% of the reform he wanted in the health care bill. Whether you can call this 'reform' or not and whether he actually got what he wanted as opposed to what he campaigned on is something all of us will be debating for some time to come. There are some good things in the bill but I personally don't think they outweigh the bad without some meaningful regulation on the insurance companies.

This type of clarity in the beginning of the debate might have been helpful since we could have been pushing harder for meaningful regulations to keep prices down instead of a public option, but who knows. Maybe the public option was nothing but a shiny object so Joe Lieberman could have his ego stroked and feel like he got his evens with the progressive blogosphere and keep him focused on that instead of him attacking things the administration did actually care about keeping in the bill. Lieberman gets to give the progressive community a kick in the teeth to make him feel better without hurting what they actually cared about having passed in the legislation. It's that or Lieberman gladly played boogie-man to give them exactly what they wanted, or maybe a little of both.

I don’t know of anyone who is satisfied with what’s in this bill so far and no one knows what we’re going to end up with once it comes out of the conference committee. I do know we’re going to keep fighting to fix whatever mess gets heaped upon us and that John is talking to House members to keep the pressure on to try to improve whatever comes out of the committee. Next moves will come after the holidays.

You can watch the entire interview on PBS's site here.

On a personal note, I hope everyone who is celebrating had a wonderful holiday out there. We did ours a bit early because of conflicts with my brothers seeing their families and people going out of town. Everyone dealing with this terrible weather be safe out there and drive carefully.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (857)

PLAYS: (2335)

PBS Newshour Nov. 27, 2009--Dubai's Plan to Postpone Paying Debt Shakes World Economy:

JUDY WOODRUFF: World markets were thrown into turmoil today on news of financial trouble in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai. Dubai announced that it planned to put off repaying almost $60 billion dollars in debt owed to international banks.

That led to big losses in Asia, worries in Europe, and a rough day for stocks on Wall Street. The markets closed early for the holiday weekend. And the Dow Jones industrial average lost 154 points, to close above 10,309. The Nasdaq fell 37 points, to close at 2,138.

We begin our coverage with a report from Faisal Islam of Independent Television News.

FAISAL ISLAM: For a second day, the collapse of Dubai's property boom has been upsetting markets worldwide. Across Asia this morning, share prices tumbled again. Gold and oil dipped, as traders asked which banks might be exposed. British banks have made significant loans to the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part. The announcement on Wednesday that a state-owned property company wished to delay the repayment of billions of dollars of debt had raised fears of a new leg to the financial crisis.

The prime minister, visiting the Commonwealth summit in the Caribbean, tried to allay fears today.

Continue reading...

How Will Dubai's Shaky Economy Affect the World?.

Margaret Warner talks to economic expert Simon Johnson about how Dubai's weak economy will affect the rest of the world.

Full transcript here.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1116)

PLAYS: (1129)

From The PBS Newshour Hunger in America:

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight: hunger in America. Jeffrey Brown has our story.

JEFFREY BROWN: One in seven American households had a hard time putting enough food on the table last year, that from a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- 14.6 percent of U.S. households, nearly 50 million Americans, found themselves in need during 2008, an increase of 13 million people from the year before. The new figure is the highest since data collection began in 1995.

The USDA called the problem food insecurity, instead of hunger. But, by any name, President Obama said, the findings were unsettling. And his secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said it's a -- quote -- "wakeup call for the country."

Inside those numbers, a more dire toll: One-third of those in need said they have been forced to skip meals, cut portions significantly, or go without food altogether.

Cynthia Sibley helps coordinate the Simple Supper, a community meal and food bank run from a Methodist church in Eagle, Colorado. She says the recession has affected many levels of her community.

CYNTHIA SIBLEY, Simple Supper: It's hitting people that -- it's surprising a lot of us. And all of us here are feeling it in one way or another. And we know people who have either lost their homes, lost their jobs. It's -- you know, it's shaking us to the core. And I know that there are a lot of places across the country that this is occurring, but to see it, you know, firsthand and experience it...

JEFFREY BROWN: Nationwide, the report said, 17 million children did not have enough to eat last year. And the Agriculture Department predicted the numbers for this year are likely to be worse still.

And now to some close-to-the-ground views from two regions. J.C. Dwyer is with the Texas Food Bank Network, a nonprofit statewide group. He joins us from San Antonio. Lynn Brantley is president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank in the Washington, D.C., metro area.

Mr. Dwyer, I wonder, first, did this report surprise you, based on what you're seeing there?

Continue reading...

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1943)

PLAYS: (4143)

From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer--TV, Radio Talkers Shaping Political Discourse in U.S. It was nice to see Thom Hartmann and Media Matters' Eric Burns featured in this segment. They both did a great job here.

GLENN BECK, Host, "Glenn Beck": If it wasn't for FOX or talk radio, we would be done as a republic.

JEFFREY BROWN: In a multimedia world of talk and more talk, the latest big talker is Glenn Beck, known for his folksiness and emotion, which sometimes spills over to tears...

GLENN BECK: I just love my country.

JEFFREY BROWN: ... and, most of all, for his over-the-top style and words, which, for many, push the limits of acceptable public rhetoric.

GLENN BECK: ... is that there are Marxist revolutionaries who have dedicated themselves to principles that will destroy our nation as we know it.

I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist.

JEFFREY BROWN: Since moving from CNN Headline News to FOX last year, Beck has successfully built up his cable TV audience. He now reaches almost three million viewers with his 5:00 p.m. show, unseating FOX's Sean Hannity for the number-two spot, right behind the network's Bill O'Reilly. On radio, Beck's audience of nine million is second only to Rush Limbaugh.

All of these talk show hosts far exceed the numbers of their liberal counterparts. And, as the numbers grow, so has the attention in other media, and Beck's seeming influence on the national agenda.

Beck is a persistent critic of the president and his policies. Among much else, he helped rally opponents to show up and speak up at this summer's town hall meetings on health care, and led the way on exposing problems with ACORN, the community organizing group that ran into numerous public controversies.

ROGER HEDGECOCK, Radio America: I like Glenn Beck personally. And I like that his TV show, in that he is speaking truth to power. That's his attitude. He really is trying to overturn the apple carts.

We're not in favor of illegal alien amnesty.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (238)

PLAYS: (1373)

September 01, 2009 PBS Newshour

MARGARET WARNER: Just two weeks ago, outside NATO headquarters in Kabul, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-filled car at a checkpoint. The blast killed seven people and wounded 91.

But the real target, said a Taliban spokesman, was not the NATO mission, but the U.S. Embassy, part of the same huge installation just down a closed road from the NATO site. As more American troops and treasure pour into Afghanistan, there are new questions about whether one of the most tempting U.S. targets for terrorists, the American Embassy, is being adequately protected.

Today, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group, laid out allegations of serious misconduct and security lapses by ArmorGroup. That's the private security company that guards the Embassy, under a $189 million contract with the State Department.

ArmorGroup, which is owned by a Florida-based firm called Wackenhut deploys a force of 450 men in Kabul. One hundred and fifty are so-called expats, former military and policemen from English-speaking countries. Three hundred are so-called Gurkhas from Nepal or Northern India.

The watchdog group's letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today detailed allegations from more than a dozen current and former expat ArmorGroup guards.

It said: "The evidence collected calls into question ArmorGroup and Wackenhut's ability to provide effective security of the embassy" -- among the allegations, routine 14-hour days, causing severe sleep deprivation for guards, chronic understaffing, causing frequently revoked leave time, inability to communicate between English-speaking expats and Nepalese Gurkhas, ritual hazing, lewd activity, prostitute use, and alcohol abuse by some expat guards and their supervisors, and low morale, causing 90 to 100 percent annual turnover in the guard force.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project, said the security implications are enormous.

DANIELLE BRIAN, executive director, Project on Government Oversight: We are tremendously concerned because we have a guard force that is sleep-deprived. They are working 14-hour days for weeks on end, with no leave.

They are tremendously demoralized, seeing their supervisors engaged in really bizarre and deviant misconduct. So, it's ruining the -- the chain of command and the level of trust. You have guards that can't actually speak the same language to each other. So, if there were an incident, the capacity to respond quickly is -- is -- is practically zero.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1011)

PLAYS: (1314)

David Brooks as usual, is wrong on just about almost everything that comes out of his mouth in this segment. Health care reform is popular. This mess that looks like it's going to be a sell out to the insurance industries is losing popularity. Obama's numbers are going down among his base and with independents as this thing plays itself out and it appears that not only was single-payer not on the table, but the public option wasn't either. It's not losing popularity because the President didn't look like he showed enough love to the Grassley's and Blue Dogs of the world.

And the democratic process has not made Chuck Grassley do anything. Chuck Grassley is out to destroy the chances of anything meaningful being done with reforming our current system, and listening to his constituents at town halls has not changed that one way or the other.

From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer Aug. 21, 2009.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that or subtract?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I'm not sure it was inevitable.

JIM LEHRER: You don't think it was inevitable?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I mean, he's lost the independents, a group I don't think he had to lose. If he had taken a stimulus package of $400 billion instead of $787 billion, I think he would have held the independents, held a lot of the Republicans.

If he had taken sort of a more moderate version of health care reform, I think he could have held on to -- there's a Wyden-Bennett plan that he, I think, would have held on to some of those independents.

I mean, the major reason he's falling down now -- the secondary reason is the economy is still not -- you know, unemployment. But the major reason is health care reform. His major domestic initiative is unpopular. The majority -- a slight majority of the American people disapprove of it, and there's no sign that that's let up.

And so he really is in a sort of not freefall, but a serious slide. You know, Charlie Cook, who knows more about congressional elections than just about anybody, has a memo out today saying there's as much of a chance the Democrats will lose more than 20 seats in the next House elections than fewer than 20 seats, and that's a pretty serious thing. That's a terrible climate in which to try to enact health care.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (833)

PLAYS: (5343)

Here's a little preview of the B.S. we can expect FreedomWorks' Dick Armey to be spouting on Meet the Press this weekend. He faced off against Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch on The PBS Newshour Thursday night. Armey uses people buying into his disinformation campaign as proof that there must be something wrong with the health care bills making their way through Congress. I agree there are problems, but for the opposite reason Dick Armey does, and somehow pursuit of the truth doesn't look like it's at the top of his organization's agenda. Protecting the insurance and health care industries' profits are.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings.

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks: Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is -- estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means...

DICK ARMEY: Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So tort reform would be an important change for the system?

DICK ARMEY: That would be a good place to start.

Continue reading »

h/t Firedoglake From The PBS Newshour:

Washington Post publisher Katherine Weymouth apologized to readers for a controversy over the newspaper's plan for a series of corporate-sponsored policy dinners at Weymouth's home. Media experts mull the implications of the scandal.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (45)

PLAY (130)

From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer April 2, 2009. John Boehner is suddenly now concerned about fiscal responsibility with his criticism of the Democratic budget. Never mind the debt that was run up under the Bush administration for things like invading other countries that weren't a threat to us and war profiteering. Never mind tax cuts that never trickle down and enrich those at the top. Now that the spending is needed to keep our country out of a depression, Boehner is concerned about the debt being left to future generations. His talk about bi-partisanship after the way he and his fellow Republicans ran the House of Representatives is also laughable.

KWAME HOLMAN: Leader Boehner, thank you for joining us.

Leader Boehner, you and other Republicans on both sides of the Capitol have looked at this budget that the Democrats are moving today in the House, that is a reflection of what President Obama has called for, and railed against it. What's wrong with what they're proposing?

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-Ohio, House minority leader: Well, I don't know where I should begin.

The first problem is it spends too much. When you look at the level of spending in this budget, it will make President Bush look like a piker. And I and other Republicans felt like we spent too much during the Bush years. But this budget, at some $3.6 trillion for next year, will be the largest expansion of our government in our history.

Secondly, it taxes too much. There are some $2 trillion worth of taxes in this proposal that will tax every American. Not only do we have higher taxes for capital gains and the top rate and bringing the death tax back in full force, but we have this national energy tax.

You know, they like to call it cap-and-trade. But what it does is that it taxes energy. And so, if you drive a car or turn on a light switch, or you have byproducts that use a lot of energy, everybody's going to pay this tax.

But it's not just the tax that's so onerous. It's the millions of American jobs that I believe will be at risk because our competitors around the world don't have such a policy. And so you'll see products coming in from China and India and elsewhere that will make our products made here more expensive relative to theirs.

And so you've got higher spending. You've got higher taxes. And then you get to the real whammy, and that's the national debt.

President Obama's budget will double the national debt in the next five years. It will triple the national debt in the next 10 years, given their projections.

This is unacceptable. I think it will imprison our kids and grandkids. It will slow our economy. It will slow job growth in America. It's just not, in my opinion, not the way to proceed.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (44)

PLAY (162)

From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer March 23, 2009. Paul Krugman is not impressed with the idea of buying these toxic assets.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Paul Krugman, you wrote critically of the plan this morning. Now you've heard Lawrence Summers. Are you persuaded?

PAUL KRUGMAN: No. You know, I wish Larry the best; I hope he's right. But this is a plan that treats a fairly minor symptom of the problem.

You know, that maybe some of these toxic assets -- I guess they're now toxic legacy assets, whatever -- are being under-priced in the market. And maybe there's a problem there.

But the fact of the matter is that the banks made a huge bet. They made a bet that the housing bubble was nonexistent, that, you know, historically unprecedented levels of consumer debt were not a problem. They lost that bet.

And this plan does almost nothing to rescue them from the consequences of that bad debt. So I'm kind of saddened. It's kind of a punt. They've decided to sort of not really take on the critical issue of fixing the banks and instead hope that a little bit of rearranging of the financial furniture will solve the problem.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, you heard Larry Summers in our interview. He used the phrase "vicious cycles turn into virtuous circles," that this would get the banks lending again. So you just don't see that enough is done here?

PAUL KRUGMAN: It's a very poorly targeted instrument. What you have is banks that have taken huge losses. And those are real losses. They're not just because the markets aren't working so well in toxic paper.

And to get the markets, to get capital flowing, to get credit flowing to the real economy, you actually need to make the banks sound again. It would take a huge increase in these prices. It would take a tremendous -- basically, you'd have to convince people that all these bum mortgages are actually pretty good in order to make the banks secure enough to start, you know, a lot of new lending.

This is not going to do that. It's going to help a little bit, maybe. Certainly it's -- you know, basically the plan hands out gold-plated toasters to anybody who participates. It's a very sweet deal for the investors. And it's going to push up the prices, but a lot of the benefits will go to financial institutions that are actually not in any trouble. A fair bit of the benefits will go to people who are not in the financial industry at all.

Only a little bit of it is going to trickle to the really critically injured banks. So it's just not -- it's a plan that kind of mistakes the nature of the problem that we face.