I’m up late and waiting for another shift to begin so it’s time to rant randomly on the whole Wall Street bailout issue.
Last week I listened to a Democratic senator who said that when they had the emergency meeting on this issue, it was like all the air went out of the room due to the dire circumstances that the economy was in.
They immediately pledged to do whatever was possible to save the economy.
Unlike McCain or Obama, I’ll flat out tell you that I don’t understand our economy. I also don’t have a lick of business sense. But I can tell you this:
Giving a $700 Billion check to the people who got us into this mess is like giving $50 to your drunken brother in law who has promised not to buy beer with the money.
You know where the money is going (to beer) and you know he’ll lie to get it out of you and you also know that he’ll be back for another $50 to “solve” his problem.
Maybe I’m bitter. When my great job went overseas I had my own financial crisis. I was left with no way to pay bills and massive debts. Most of it was my own doing, stupidly relying on credit cards to get through life. I had no one to bail me out. In fact, when I couldn’t pay my bills what did the credit card companies do? They sold my debt to someone who tripled it. That’s right, bad debt became someone’s profit and on top of the bills I couldn’t pay, now I owed 3 times as much. Now I’m doing whatever it takes to take care of my financial future, but there will be no “bail out” of my future without taking significant blows to my pride and my credit.
I’m doing what I have to do because I have no options. While I was stupid, I ended up selling nearly everything I bought over the years just to pay bills. I had to bite the bullet and sell 20+ years worth of comics (something that killed me doing) at less than market value just to make bills. Even then, it didn’t put a dent in my overall debt, all it really did was throw away a legacy I had wanted to give my niece and nephews one day.
But in this mess, I’ve learned things. I pay everything in cash on hand now. My only “credit” cards are my ATM card and my Paypal card. While one says Visa and the other says Mastercard, they deduct directly from my checking account. I don’t buy what I can’t afford. I won’t take a line of credit from anyone other than my parents, and even then, I’ve made sure that everything I’ve borrowed from them is budgeted and paid back over time with interest.
This is why I’m so upset with the bailout plan. It’s JUST like the Iraq war. We’re taking loans to pay this $700 billion from countries like China. We’re already up to our necks in debt from the Iraq war. There’s no way that we’re going to pay this off in our lifetime if we keep getting tax cuts. Sure we can slash the budget on things the Republicans hate (you know, Science, Education, rape kits in Alaska), but the fact is we’re borrowing way over our heads and making everyone pay for it.
Worse yet, there’s no oversight. There’s also a stipulation in it that the Treasury Secretary can do whatever he wants with the money and his actions are not reviewable by the legislative branch or the courts. So, as the plan was originally proposed, we’re giving the guy $700 billion to do whatever he wants to do with, and NO ONE can tell him “no.”
Yeah. He’s not going to buy beer with that money.
The future looks bright. For China and everyone else we owe money to.
I have a headache.
Mutter grumble sputter.
Jim