Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

"This was a joke," said Co-Director of the Center of Economic Policy Research Dean Baker of the proposed bailout bill that failed to pass in Congress yesterday. Baker and other economic experts analyzed the economy at a discussion held by the Institution for Policy Studies (IPS). Baker said that the Bush administration was "trying to hold a gun to our head," and that the general public was smart enough to oppose the bill. After the bill failed to pass in Congress, Baker said "I was out there celebrating yesterday."

Baker said the central reason for the economic problems we've had is the drop in the housing market. He said that housing prices have gone down 20-30 percent since 2006, and said that eliminates up to $70,000 of every homeowner's net worth.

Director of the Economic Policy Institute Living Standards Program Jared Bernstein asked why Treasury Secretary's initial plan required $700 billion. Bernstein said the reason for the amount asked for in the bill was never made clear. He also asked why the government "would not intervene directly in the housing market." He said that this proposed bailout will, for the taxpayers, be "a uniquely unrewarding recovery."

IPS scholar and New York Times bestselling author Barbara Ehrenreich said that a big portion of the problem was the "polarization" of the economy in the United States. She cited the fact that the U.S. is the most economically polarized country of all industrialized nations. Ehrenreich also said that 25-30 percent of employed Americans are "failing to makes ends meet." She said that the U.S. has used "easy credit as a substitute" for those that do not make enough money on their own. She said that this system must change, and that the wealthy "could never have imagined the problems" of the poor in the United States.