Stop The Bail Out Now
by Big Dog on Sep 23, 2008 at 11:05 Political
I have written that I understand the reason for the bailout but that I am not happy with it. The government should not be in the business of giving taxpayer money to businesses that are failing because they were mismanaged. It makes no difference if the market turned, it was greed, or they did not know what they were doing. The fact is, taxpayers do not share the wealth when these companies make money and we should not pay for the problems when they don’t.
The government is moving toward socialism where it will own, subsidize or underwrite everything. This is not the America I grew up in and it is not the America I want to leave to my grandchildren.
The reality is that the federal government is unable to do things effectively and they are irresponsible with our money. That’s right our money. In addition to the fiasco and huge expense that Treasury Secretary Paulson is working on to bailout his buddies in the financial world, the government is adding many items to the bailout showing once again that they cannot wait to spend our money. The Washington Times reports:
In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other “troubled” assets held by banks.
The changes, which were included in draft language that also opened the bailout program to foreign banks with extensive loan operations in the United States, potentially added tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the program.
Although it was a major addition to what was already the nation’s largest-ever bailout, it did not become part of the debate between Democrats and the Treasury over details of the program. A Monday counterproposal by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd included such consumer loans as well as mortgages, just as the Treasury’s draft did Saturday night.
When exactly are people going to be held accountable for their own risks in life? The financial geniuses who make millions of dollars in salaries are still rich while the country pays for their sins. Now, the government is adding people who made bad decisions with their credit and students who finance their schooling to the program.
Let me be clear; IT IS NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TAXPAYER TO PAY FOR ANY OF THIS.
People who are in credit card debt or have car loans that they cannot afford have no one to blame but themselves. Students who take out loans for an education are making an investment in their future. I wonder how these students would act if their future earnings were given to taxpayers. It is, after all, only fair. If we pay for your car, house or credit cards then we deserve to have the things you bought. This idea that the world will end if people or businesses fail is ridiculous.
We need to end this whole bailout now. ALL OF IT. If AIG and other companies, including foreign banks, are going to fail than let them fail. This is a buyer’s opportunity to pick up cheap investments. Lehman Brothers is being purchased, Constellation Energy is being purchased (by a Warren Buffet company) and there are many (like Buffet) looking for bargains. If a company fails there are people who will buy them on the cheap and have a go at making them successful. If no one buys them then they can go out of business.
It is a shame that people lose their jobs as a result of mismanagement and the ineptitude of the corrupt government but that is not the fault of the taxpayer.
John McCain needs to oppose this bailout. He needs to provide real leadership and show that he truly is against government waste because surely, this bailout is just that. The money is designed to let Paulson help his buddies and it is designed to allow politicians claim they were there to help during a time of crisis. This is particularly important to them because it is an election year and they are the ones who helped cause it.
Look at the items added. Christopher Dodd added consumer loans. He is the criminal most responsible. He has his Countrywide VIP loan that saved him $75,000 and he failed, to act early on when President Bush, on 17 occasions, warned of trouble and tried to get something done. The last things we need are the people who caused this mess to be the ones overseeing its cleanup. Yes, greed on Wall Street is partly responsible but to be fair, many mortgage companies were following the inane law that allows people with no hope of affording a house to buy one. Did they [financial companies] abuse the process? You bet and they should be held accountable.
Everyone involved should be held accountable. We can do this by:
- Getting rid of the CEOs and ensuring they do not receive a severance.
- Take back some of the untold millions these people made through greed and shady practices
- Stop the bailout and let unsound companies fail (or be bought up)
- Vote for the non incumbent challenger in all 435 House seats (thereby replacing the entire House)
- Vote for the non incumbent challenger in all contested Senate seats (thereby replacing 1/3 of the Senate)
- Hold people accountable for their own loans. If they fail they will learn a valuable lesson. If we bail them out, they will not
It is time for a shake up in DC. We need to replace all of these criminals so that they are held accountable for their misdeeds.
It is also time we held our fellow citizens accountable for their actions. Ron Paul has an excellent piece on this. He states exactly what I believe:
Additionally, the government’s actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.
I would add that this extends to any individual who takes risky decisions and is bailed out by the government.
Big Dog Salute to Raven who, as usual, is on top of things.
Others:
Texas Pundit
Tags: bailout, corruption, dodd, mortgage companies, paulson, sham, taxpayer fraud
I do not claim to have the answer. However, the crippling effect recent failures on Wall Street have had across the world financial markets indicate to me we’re not the only ones playing games with other people’s money. China and others hold a great deal of US debt. Whether it is better to let it play out with no intervention or allow the government to as they claim hold failed assets at taxpayer expense in the hope of selling them later at a profit seems as risky as what got us in to this mess. But some intervention may be necessary regardless of our personal opinions. For instance, shore up investor confidence which may allow the credit markets to repair the economy as long as adequate regulation and accountability can for once be put in place. It would be easy to allow things to proceed naturally if the real culprits were made to pay but that is not likely to happen.
This is a new blog for me so you are the first to link to it. I thank you! Sure hope that McCain/Palin will clean this stuff up, cause if not I’ll have to cuss a blue streak and I hate cussin’!
Again, thanks for the link! 🙂
So what about the state of the economy? Isn’t the bailout intended to prevent economic meltdown in the country? I keep asking my wife to explain this stuff to me because she’s in economics classes right now but I forget what she said…
I am not an economist but I would think that it would put us in a recession. There is no guarantee that the bailout would work and we could still end up in a recession only we would have spent nearly a trillion dollars to get there.
I don’t like the idea of a bailout and adding every bad loan makes it even worse. Somewhere along the line people have to be held accountable for their actions.
I’m a big fan of common sense, and common sense says let them fail. No one from the US Government is going to bail my butt out if I get into financial trouble, they won’t bail out thousands of small business owners who make poor decisions, so why do these big banks get bailed out by me, you, and every other taxpayer? Common sense says if you screw up you suffer the consequences, you know that whole responsible for your own actions thing…
Too big to fail? Maybe…I’m not an economist and I don’t know exactly how it will effect our (and the world’s) economy if we let them crash & burn like they deserve to. Then again a single company should never be so large that its failure would cripple our economy, isn’t that one of the reasons we have laws against monopolies? Common wisdom also advises against putting all your eggs in one basket. Shouldn’t the government oversight have forced a split on these companies like they did on Bell Communications?
Also when companies fail don’t other companies buy up their assets at market value, even if that value is dirt cheap at the time of sale? Also if the taxpayers have to bail these companies out I think the CEOs, upper management, and any board members who had a controlling say in the companies direction need to have their assets seized and sold off to pay for this fiasco as much as possible. Unfortunately that would never happen because personal, professional, and political (for Liberal/Democrats at least) accountability is dead in the USA.
Has anyone checked out the party afiliations of the CEOs with golden parachutes making millions as they depart?
That is ridiculous – departing a sinking ship with a golden parachute. What a joke. I agree with BD, when these companies were doing well we didnt’ get squat from them but now we are supposed to shoulder the burden for their failures? This is outrageous. I wonder if these investigations will lead to people actually being penalized for their actions. Doubtful…
I agree with everything except the concept that MCcain Palin could fix this- McCain said on 09/19 that the economy is sound. The republicans did this being soley for big business. Give Obama a chance to change our countyy’s slide into a depression before we are selling apples on the corner!
Sherri,
John McCain said the FUNDAMENTALS of our economy are sound. Which means the BASICS are sound, the people who are the fundamental drivers for it are sound. Are there problems, Yes but the basics are sound.
If you elect Obama he will tax us into a depression.
Taxes did not cause the great depression. Please study your history, and you will find out that it was the same thing that is about to cause this one- greed and unwarranted speculation and rampant inflation. Combine that with no government oversight or accountability. And we expect the politicians to fix this thing? Ain’t happening.
Alex,
I love when Liberals tell people to study history when they can’t comprehend the recent events much less the past. I did not say that taxes caused the great depression.
The Great Depression was the culmination of many factors including too much debt and price deflation. However, no country has ever taxed itself to prosperity and raising taxes during a downturn in the economy would deepen the problem.
The problem now is TOO much government oversight. The rules said that businesses had to lend money to people who could not afford to pay it back. There were greedy CEOs who took advantage of this and Hank Paulson’s buddies profited.
The Fed did not help by artificially boosting the economy with rate cuts and other interventions. This crisis has been brewing for decades and all the politicians have done is take money to ignore it and kick the can down the road.
Get rid of them and put new people in Congress.
Government has a hard time running government, what makes anyone think they can run a business…and that is what they are asking for.
Wall Street made millions and millions of dollars on the questionable loan packages with the thought that real estate would continue to expand…guess what, didn’t happen…now they pay the price. It was a bad business decision, happens every day and businesses lose and learn not to make those same mistakes.
Joke…Winston Churchill got very drunk one night and a lady came up and said…”your drunk”…Churchill told her she was “ugly”, but tomorrow I will be sober….that is what what this situation is…we are drunk…but will get sober…Wall Street and Government are ugly and will continue to be. Let the system work the way it was designed to work…will it be difficult, yes, for a while but in the end we will be so much better off.
Sadly every one is looking at the financial loss and giving nearly no thought to the opportunity the American people now have in front of them.
For years our government has been under the control of just a few families that have dictated every aspect of life to what is now over three hundred million people and they have done so without regard to the fact that this is suppose to be a republic , not a democracy or socialist state.
If this massive bail out can be stopped it will come with a price tag that is high but it will also come with a pay out that is worth more then paper debt , it is called freedom from suppression.
As it stands today we do not really own anything but our souls. There is nothing we have that can not be taken from us by the current governmental forces via delinquent taxes or just out right confiscation.
If some one can take it from you , then you do not truly own it and never did. Instead you are just sitting on it until the real owner decides they want it back.
Let the banks fail , let the other countries that have taken part in the suppression of our peoples and their own go down with those banks, governments and ultimately the ruling class of real worlds wealth dealers into nothing more then a page of bad history as an example of what not to ever allow again on a free people.
All this discussion on how to handle the bail out by the powerful rather then the basic fundamental argument that should be taking place , why a bail out at all ?
If your political mouth pieces vote for this bail out , net election vote them out if the only one running against them is dead and in the ground.
Fact is , a carcass six feet under would better serve us then the live hypocrisy that is currently so brazen they are now stabbing us in the face instead of the back.
Corvus
All this will do is prolong the wealth Of the fat cats now makeing money off the tax payers, I don’t recall getting to vote on this,
for a ceo to still make 500.000 next year who broke the company is unacceptable,but yet our morons in congress passed it,, what a joke we have as a goverment,
BIG DOG your wishes came true, NO bailout, NO mccain thank god!!! also Obama just kicked some serious mccain-palin butt in last debate He Heee!
mambo, you must have watched a different debate than I did. Well, why do we even need the election if Obama has it wrapped up?
Let’s wait and see.
now the MEDI attempts to put fear into everyones heart…by saying that we need wall street experst to be involved with “the Plan”…were these not the same people that already got us to the plan?
Then:
They say they will be no credit…let me tell you, I can go out today and borrow about any amounjt of money that I want…I have great history on repaying and will have proper terms and conditions and I will get that loan….now if my history was not goof or the terms not good or the conditions are not good then i will not AND SHOULD NOT GET A LOAN…
That is why we are in the problem we are today…wall street allowed some stupid things, people never showing a hisyorty of repaying debt, no enough money to repay the debt and then lender who put people into funky practices without EXPLAINING that in 4 years your house payment is going to double in 4 years and not to mention that your property tav would be 10-25% higher and simply qask the questition, can you afford that?
They lived in their galss houses thinking that real estate would go up in value and guess what they thought wrong, good builders continued to build good homes and we just had too many. Now their glass houses are having stones thrown at them.
I’m ready for a bumpy ride…save your money, pay your bills and you will be receiving credit to make your major purposes….don’t do the above and then you won’t have the chance to obtain credit…nor should you…it is the TRUE AMERICAN WAY.
And another thing, they need to stop all these crdit card offerings people get in the mail…the credit card area is also a prime reason we are where we are today.
Tomorrow for the right people, the middle class people, who pays their bills, on time and hav ethe income to support the payment…we bring the best longterm results to this finanicial sitution.
Don’t take down…call or email your Senators and Congress people daily….and also mention the sooner they allow for oil drilling HERE the hundreds of thousands of more jobs we can get created…and I wouldn’t hire anyone from wall street, they don’t know how to work, at least in an honest manner.
There are a number of anti bailout petitions online. This one http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/put-the-bailout-on-the-ballot/ is an alternative. Please pass it around. thanks
At this point, we need to focus on “un-electing” those Senators and Representatives who voted “yes” for the Bailout. They were willing to ignore the 90% of us who were against the Bailout, clearly demonstrating that they do NOT represent us.
A new group called the Constituent Response Team has been working to do just that.
CRT has put together a Bailout Vote Map that makes it easy (as a mouse click) to find out how your Senators and Representatives voted.
The Constituent Response Team has also just published pre-customized web banners and ads targeted at those who voted “yes” for the Bailout. You can easily paste these ads onto your website or blog using simple embedding code (provided off course).
If you are interested in either, check out Constituent Response at http://www.constituentresponse.com . The Bailout Vote Map is on the main page; the “Vote ‘no” on incumbents who voted ‘yes'” ads are under the Host CRT Ads link.