UPDATE: Many thanks to the House of Representatives for making almost everything below obsolete by defeating the bill. Since some reincarnation of it is almost certain to ensue, it’s still a good idea to let your Congresscritters know what you think. Here’s some ideas about what the bill should say. It is worth noting that according to CNBC, Wall Street is just shocked that this thing didn’t pass (as I write, the DJIA is still/again down over 500 points). I’m just shocked that they’re just shocked that Congress did constituents wanted instead of what lobbyists, the Administration, and some wealthy financial institutions wanted.  It is 5 weeks before a national election, you know.

Here’s what I wrote to my Senators, supporting links added for your benefit:

As more details about the proposed Bank Bailout are known, the more insane it looks!

Not only does it give vast powers to the Secretary of the Treasury, not only does it do very little to help homeowners in Nevada and elsewhere keep their homes — I hope you have not forgotten that the Sun reports 1 out of every 91 Nevada households is in the foreclosure process — not only are economists on the right and left convinced it could make things worse, not only does it do nothing to keep bank executives from running off with excessive final paychecks while normal employees and depositors get the short end of the stick.

I am now reading that reserve requirements for some banks may be reduced to zero! That’s called “insolvency” by most people, Senator.

Further, the stock shares that the government will take in return for the “free money” in the bill won’t even be voting shares! For pity sake, if Joe Average buys 100 shares of a bank, he’ll get more of a vote than the entity giving them millions or even billions of dollars? I don’t think so!

This bill is bad for the American people, bad for the American economy, and bad for any Senator who hopes to be re-elected.

If you want to read the thing for yourself, a link to it is at Economist’s View. If you have a viewpoint you would like your Congresscritters to know about, grab a peice of recent mail with your Zip+4 on it so you can look up your Representative on the House website.  As I write, the House site is particularly slow, since thousands of people are all trying to reach it at the same time.  Remember, your Rep probably has a local phone number that you can call.  All you’ll need to get hold of your Senator on that site is to know what state you live in.  Feel free to copy/paste if you like what I wrote.  If you aren’t in Nevada, you might want to talk about your own state in that sentence.