ROBERT JOHNSON (former chief economist for the Senate Banking Committee): Well, first of all, Secretary Paulson put a dreadful plan forward, and it was as if he dropped a vacuum into the process. And Congress had to make a decision whether to adopt his simple and dreadful plan or put forward something of their own, but they had essentially one week’s time, with an anxious market, to put something together, so it was a very hurried process.

When they had made enough modifications, but essentially has adopted Paulson’s frame, you could feel the markets weren’t confident that it was going to work. The population, rightfully, didn’t feel like it represented them very well, and it was very unpopular. Republicans are very far out of power right now and losing power and afraid of losing their job. And some of the Republican congressmen thought they got a get-out-of-jail-free card. If they rebelled against this and actually represented the population, they could go forward claiming that they were on the side of the people. Democrats couldn’t afford to let them do that. And yesterday, Nancy Pelosi called the vote that she—how would I say?—I think understood would lose and send us all back to the drawing board.

AMY GOODMAN: You think she wanted it to lose?

ROBERT JOHNSON: I think it—I would say, probably, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

ROBERT JOHNSON: Number one, the Democrats can’t pass a bad bill and let the Republicans rebel against them. They’ll lose seats in the House. Number two, there’s now an opportunity to actually do something that’s much better vis-a-vis mortgage relief, a proper representation of the stockholders. You know, it’s as if we could have nominated Warren Buffett to represent the taxpayer. He would have structured the deal very differently. The deal we should get is the same deal Berkshire Hathaway stockholders get when he buys into Goldman Sachs.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain. What would Warren Buffett do now, if it was—if he was representing the taxpayers, and they were shaping this bill?

ROBERT JOHNSON: Well, the taxpayers have the strong hand. They’ve got the money. The Wall Street firms are weak. So he would go in. He would take control of the company, basically diminishing or wiping out the equity. He would probably ask for the resignation of top officials. He might not accept every resignation letter. He would restructure the company. He would sell off some assets. And then, when the company regained its health a few years down the road, he could sell those preferred stock shares back into the market and recoup the money for his investors, meaning, in this case, the US taxpayer.

AMY GOODMAN: In other words, he would restructure Wall Street.

BRUCE MARKS (founder and CEO of NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America): Why should we trust him with $700 billion of our money? There’s nothing you can do to this bill to make it palatable to the American people. And that’s why all the establishment and the economists have said we should do it. But you know what? The American people are smarter than that, and they’re saying, “Hell no! We’re going to stop this thing,” because if I was a congressman, if I was a senator, I’d be scared to death to go to my district and say I supported this corporate bailout. It’s an outrage, and we’ve got to call it for what it is.

AMY GOODMAN: What we have now is Washington Mutual seized by regulators before its assets were sold to JPMorgan. Now, the nation has three superbanks: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase.

ROBERT JOHNSON: You say, too big to fail. Well, if you’re too big to fail, you’re too big to be let loose to do whatever you want to do, because, in essence, you’re a ward of the state. You’re like a public utility that we all depend on. And what they’ve tried to do is be too big to fail, but, on the upside, play whatever gambling games they want to do. That’s got to change.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Bruce Marks, final words?

BRUCE MARKS: It is a real problem out there that these are so big they can’t even move to readdress what’s going on in the market. But again, the last words are: please, to all your viewers, call your congressmen, call your congresswomen. Tell them, don’t do the bailout. It’s working; we’re winning. The left and the right are coming together to stop this theft of the American taxpayer dollar. It’s a theft. Let’s stop it. We’re winning. We can kill this thing.