Bail me out

Dear Congressional Representative:

Regarding: Credit Default Swap System Regulations

We encourage you to act immediately regarding the credit default swaps system that has pervaded the financial markets for the past decade.

As indicated in a Time.com article dated March 27, 2008, these “insurance-like contracts” are supposed to act similarly to home insurance policies that provide for losses from fire and theft. However, they do not provide insurance since they are not regulated. “As a result, contracts can be traded - or swapped- from investor to investor without anyone overseeing the trades to ensure the buyer has the resources to cover the losses...” Heavily traded, these credit default swaps are traded in secret with no accountability by commercial banks and other hedge fund managers.

Wall Street has scammed the American people in the amount of $700 billion; while certain members of Congress have scammed the American people for billions more through “extensions” that were tacked on to H.R. 1424 by pork barrel projects; projects that most Americans aren’t even aware of.

How, as our congressional representative, can you help us on Main Street, America? Here are our demands:
• We demand more regulation and more transparency for credit default swaps
• We demand to know, by publishing the name and state of Congressional leaders who put the “pork” into H.R. 1424
• We demand to know what punishment CEO’s such as Lehman Brothers Richard Fuld will receive and who will hold him accountable as well as other CEO’s of companies such as AIG, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bear-Sterns, etc.
• We demand to know how the $700 billion in taxpayer money will be used by the government and who will hold the government accountable for using the money for it’s intended purpose
• We demand to know who was overseeing the financial system before it became a financial crisis and why didn’t they do anything to prevent this from happening,
• We demand a cap on executive salaries, bonuses, and golden parachutesWe have worked our entire lives, paid our taxes, paid our bills in full and on time each and every month, and planned for our retirement years. In the last week, all of our efforts have been denigrated by greedy companies and their leaders seeking extreme financial gain through unregulated and atrocious financial practices. Who’s bailing us out?