A taxpayer bank
When private enterprise fails to provide an essential function, the government has to step in. It has happened many times in the course of history. With regard to health insurance, it has had to do so for the elderly and the poor. And it should be doing so now for the 40 million uninsured by offering affordable insurance.
For similar reasons, we citizens should be insisting on a government option to replace those banks which are called "too big to fail," the ones which suddenly did fail, plunging the country and even the world into the worst depression since 1930.
The government option should take the form of a taxpayer-owned bank too stable to fail. It would be in competition with and an example to the "high flyers" of how to run a bank. It would be the lender of last resort when the others had become too fearful to loan. Its mandate would not include bailing out risk-taking failures. It would be a bank whose primary interest would not be profits but the welfare of the social system and the economy. It would be run by civil servants at civil servant salaries; that would be the biggest blow of all to the narcissism of those collecting $20 million bonuses.
R. E. Reinert
Northport
Orwell was prescient
So, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the figurehead of a nation that is waging war in three countries, contemplating an attack on a fourth, and has troops occupying space in more than 150 countries on the planet.
From his grave Orwell must chuckling at his prescience.
Phil Jones
Traverse City
Not talk and talk
Job creation in northern Michigan should be the No. 1 priority for leaders in Lansing and in Washington, D.C.
Sadly, this appears not to be the case. How many months can we continue with regional unemployment topping 17 to 18 percent?
I know that change happens and that jobs come and go.
Right now we need stronger leadership from both parties to focus on creating jobs. We need to support new entrepreneurs who will create the new jobs of tommorrow.
We need action, not political talk and talk.
Paul Hornbogen
Cadillac
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