[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21781]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  SECRETARY PAULSON'S SOLUTION TO THE URGENT FINANCIAL CRISIS IS WRONG

  (Mr. HOLT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOLT. Madam Speaker, Secretary Paulson's solution to the urgent 
financial crisis is wrong. The problem is that the financial 
institutions have been trading securities whose value they don't know 
and can't know because bad mortgages are mixed in with good mortgages 
in indeterminate amounts.
  For any problem, you should go to the root in order to solve it. The 
root here is that the bad mortgages mixed with the good mortgages have 
poisoned the financial papers. In buying those papers, the taxpayers 
won't know whether they are getting any value for their dollar, and 
neither Paulson nor the market will be able to determine the value. So 
go to the root. Repair the bad mortgages. It will help Wall Street and 
Main Street. It will restore confidence, liquidity and solvency.
  There is an antecedent. The Homeowners Loan Corporation in the 1930s 
dealt with a crisis of bad mortgages, put up $70 billion in today's 
dollars and rescued 1 million homeowners. It worked.

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