“Frankly, we are tired of this administration coming to us saying that the sky is falling. Something that has to be done without time to think, that it has to be done in secret, that the usually protections have to be suspended because the sky is falling,” says Janice Mathis, national V.P. of Rainbow PUSH. “That’s what we heard with Iraq. That is what we heard with the drug prescription bill. That is what we heard with the Patriot Act. We’re tired of that. We want a deliberate process that protects consumers, really shores up Wall Street markets and gives our economy the boost that it deserves so that Americans can do what they want to do, which is work and pay their bills when they come due.”
Pres. Bush and members of Congress are meeting in Washington at the time of this press conference to reach a resolution to this modern-day crisis. Mathis says she doesn’t approve giving any money for a bailout, particularly if it will be given without Congressional or independent oversight.
“Oversight is critical. We cannot allow the people who got into this to be the only people to lead us out of it. We do not know what the impact that this proposal will have on the marketplace. We are in uncharted waters,” says Calvin Vismale of VA Capital and an Atlanta-based financial expert. “We have never seen the likes of situation before and we need to proceed in a way that provides equity in terms of the upside participation and risks spread out fairly,” Vismale says before adding: “$700 could easily creep to a trillion dollars before you know it.”
The Rainbow/PUSH coalition proposes several alternatives to the exorbitant bailout number proposed by Bush. “One, they should offer as a matter of right the option to modify your mortgage loans at a rate that allows the bank to make money but also allows the homeowner to pay the mortgage,” Mathis says, proposing a 4.5 to 5.5 percent rate. “In bankruptcy [court] you can petition the court and get the right pay, the value of the collateral and not the contract price of the note. And that’s the same thing that folks should do in bankruptcy with their mortgage. It is a system that has proven to work and it is not risky.” –terry shropshire
