Why reward the very people who created this Wall Street mess and why trust an already badly broken and ill-advised government?

Asking Congress to appropriate such a large sum will do more harm than doing nothing. The world will see our desperation and the dollar and the market will again be hit even more badly. This will only wet the appetite for other “desperate” businesses to clamor for a “bailout” from our government.

What is needed is a bold and unexpected approach like raise taxes on the wealthy, decrease our national debt, reduce pork spending to zero, provide incentives to return jobs to the United States, allow interest rates to increase to reward small investors, to prevent companies from going broke and giving huge bonuses and make Wall Street a honest place for people to invest their money.

This attitude that business can regulate itself is not working. While I oppose over-regulation, we need enforcement of our regulations. The current administration and Congress have reduced enforcement to being a crime in itself.

Congress would even consider using “profits” of the bailout, which there will be none, to go to a fund to provide housing for the poor. What about us middle class and near poor who bought stock and bonds and now see them gone only to reward the fat cats of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street?

Francis M. Crowder, Anderson