PAWNS IN THE GAME (CONFIRMED)

Below is the transcript from Larry King 7/30/2008................

I was surprised to hear this comment come from a friend (Ben Stein) of the conservatives, but, it's about time someone from that side admitted it. I've been saying it for about 2 years now. This is proof we're all just pawns because they know what's up.

They always say Dems want more government, but when you let the private sector run amok (Wall Street/ Health Care/ Defense Contracts), you jeopardize the entire country. The rich get richer at the tax payers expense, the government winds up bailing out the company in order to stabilize our economy, and the tax payer eventually foots the bill anyway (insult to injury).

Why not regulate all financial markets in the first place, in order to establish some type of control. Especially to reign in the "Speculators" that artificially drive up stock prices. This will ensure the nation's economic viability, and growth, for the "long term", plus, money always "trickles up" anyway. They would just be guaranteeing their own welfare for years to come.

The last highlighted quote by Stein blew me away!!



(Obama supporter) KRUGMAN: No. I mean presidents can do, over time, quite a lot. But the -- you know, the fact of the matter -- and I'm going to shock Ben by agreeing with him a bit here.

Look, we had, by my rough estimate, about 25 million people bought houses that are now worth less than they were when they bought them. About 10 million people have got negative equity -- the house is worth less than their mortgage. That's going to rise. It might hit $20 million.


That's a -- that's going to cause a lot of pain no matter what you do. But you can mitigate it. You can try and be there for the people who are in real, real distress, which is what this bill partly does. You can try to make sure the financial system keeps going. It's amazing to me, again, to hear Ben and President Bush sort of going along with this. There's a line there's no atheists in foxholes and there's no free market advocates in financial crises. So everybody is saying, you know, we've got to keep this thing rolling.

And, you know, and then it's going to be a process. If we can get a good economic recovery going next year, if we can grab policies, a real, you know, stimulus policy that makes sure that people have jobs, that have incomes, that's going to cushion the blow some.

But, look, we've had a terrible -- we had the mother of all financial bubbles, as people have been saying.

STEIN: Well...

KRUGMAN: The housing bubble was enormous. And it's -- there's no way you can make it go away painlessly.

STEIN: And we also had a tremendous tech bubble under my friend and yours, Mr. Clinton. But they're bubbles. And it's a terrible problem that we don't have enough government supervision. I'm going to shock you and say there's a gigantic flaw in Republican policy, which is not believing in regulation. A few hundred million dollars worth of regulation would have avoided this entire problem of the credit meltdown. Maybe $20 million, $30 million of decent regulation would have avoided this entire problem in the credit meltdown. It's going to cost the taxpayers tens...

KRUGMAN: All right.

STEIN: ...maybe hundreds of billions of dollars. Supervision and regulation are not...

KRUGMAN: Then ask yourself which candidates is more likely...

STEIN: I agree that that's a flaw in Mr. McCain's platform. He should be saying we're going to be supervising people.

We're going to be the party of Teddy Roosevelt. We're not going to let the big boys on Wall Street suck the blood out of America and then walk home rich like rich fat pigs while the rest of America is suffering.

KING: OK. All right.

A couple of other quick things, gentlemen.

KRUGMAN: Yes. I think that's an Obama slogan. (INAUDIBLE).