READERS WRITE: MORE LETTERS ON THE ECONOMY

Greedy should face their financial sins

The creation of wealth is based on widespread prosperity, not on saving secretive and greedy manipulators from their own financial sins. Outrageous executive compensation divorced from performance measures, privatizing equally outrageous (and often dishonest) profits while socializing losses, and creating unfair “Louis XIV” tax structures (in which the aristocracy pays little or no tax) are all symptoms of a decadent, diseased capitalism that has forgotten its roots in the well-being of the American worker. (Henry Ford understood that when he raised the wages of his workers to be able to afford a Model T).

This must end. Executives who fail need to be economically punished, not rewarded. Companies must bear their losses, and any government help to avert disaster must reward the helpers, the taxpayers. And trickle-down economics, along with regressive trends in taxation it has fostered for one-and-a-half generations, needs a decent, quick burial.

STEWART WILBER

Roswell

Don’t hock our savings for bailout

I am outraged and absolutely disagree that taxpayers’ savings and earnings have to be hocked quickly to bail out greedy, incompetent Wall Street investors.

This huge deregulation mess took years to bring us to this point. We need to take the time to have a well-thought-out plan with competent oversight and supervision, with U.S. taxpayers having a stake in any profits, eliminating expensive, lavish executive-compensation packages.

JANNAH GOODELL, Atlanta

We foot bill, unscrupulous business leaders walk

Once again, we the people have tried to play by the rules and listened to the powers-that-be. And once again, we lose and they win.

How? We foot the bill (taxes) for bailing out unscrupulous businesses while their leaders walk away, no matter what happens, with their millions in bonuses for a job well done. (By the way, this is the worldview the conservatives keep trying to shove down our throats, all the while raking in their profits and laughing at our gullibility.) I say enough! We need responsible and responsive government. This is, after all —- in theory anyway —- our country. Vote your conscience.

DAVID ERNEY, Acworth

Bailout must include stop of subprime loans

Our financial system is bleeding to death, but simply approving a $700 billion bailout will not staunch the flow of money into mortgages for those who cannot make the payments. So-called subprime and Alt-A loans must be stopped as part of the bailout. The country cannot afford the payments, either.

ROGER CARTER, Woodstock

Ditch huge tax cuts for rich, make about-face

As part of the $700 billion bailout, we need to get rid of the huge tax cuts for the rich and their greedy corporations. These unnecessary tax cuts have given us the biggest deficits in history year after year, and this is one of the main causes for the financial disaster we are in at this moment. Our economy is on the verge of collapse, and we are headed for a depression, just like in the 1930s. We must have a total about-face from the current administration’s reckless spending and lack of fiscal responsibility.

BRUCE HANSEN

Stone Mountain

Interests of ordinary people not protected by disaster capitalism

Just as the war against Iraq was sold to the American people six years ago with lies, fear and deliberately understated projected costs, so too is the administration’s proposed massive bailout of Wall Street.

Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” should be required reading for every concerned citizen. Klein describes how disaster capitalism works against the interests of ordinary people. The house of cards that had been a largely unregulated economy is coming apart, and all that most of us can do is hunker down, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Will Congress hold those responsible for this mess accountable? Don’t bet on it.

LOU SARTOR

Atlanta

Hasty decisions aren’t best ones; is crisis another power grab?

Remember when an immediate decision had to be made on the Patriot Act because of 9/11? And with no time to waste, the decision was made to invade Iraq? We lost many of our civil liberties because of fear tactics and those hasty decisions.

Is this financial crisis another power grab with unknown consequences? We’ve seen who reaps the profits of decisions made quickly in times of fear. Are we to just sit and wait?

SHIRLEY SESSIONS

Carrollton