madam president i want to salute my friends in the communist and green groups
they are right about one thing
if we adopted a tenth part of their policy we would be in serious trouble but they have got one thing right which is that these bail-outs are punishing the majority of people in order to reward some very wealthy individuals
if we want to rescue banks that are exposed in greece particularly french and german banks it would be much cheaper just to give them the money directly rather than routing it scenically through athens
but i have to stand back and question the premise
why yet again given the failure of the first round of bank bail-outs are taxpayers being expected to come forward and rescue some very wealthy individuals from the consequences of their own error
we in our generation look back at ancient régime europe and we wonder how such a system could have existed
we say how could it possibly have been constructed so that only the nobility had exemption from taxation
how could we have tolerated a system where only the little guys were paying taxes
but you know what
we are recreating exactly that system by shovelling around this public money in order to save some vested interests
so hasta la victoria siempre
