October 8, 2008

The McCain Bailout Plan

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THE McCAIN BAILOUT PLAN….If Brad DeLong is right, John McCain’s new plan for bailing out homeowners is actually a bailout of the banks who originated the housing bubble’s most reckless loans: option ARMs, teaser packages, NINJAs, no-docs, and all the rest. Basically, McCain plans to buy up bad mortgages at full face value and then restructure them into cheaper FHA mortgages. Homeowners are indeed helped, but the banks who made the loans are paid off for the full amount of the loan.

Roughly speaking, Brad figures that out of the $300 billion McCain wants to dedicate to his program, a full third would go to mortgage lenders. “It means that John McCain wants to give $100 billion of taxpayers’ money to America’s worst-behaving mortgage financiers.” This is worse than the Paulson bailout approach and far worse than recapitalizing troubled banks, as many liberals think we ought to do. Brad again:

There’s a big difference here: Democrats want to prevent depression and support the financial markets by investing taxpayer money in banks with troubled assets. Republicans want to give taxpayers money away to the shareholders and managers of banks with troubled assets.

I would say that this is unbelievable, but I do believe it.

Somebody needs to ask McCain some very hard questions about the details of this plan.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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