If you understand how the economy of the United States was designed to work...then this bailout is nothing less than criminal.
This bailout is not the problem. The problem was created by the government's deregulation of the market & if we didn't act the economy would have suffered drastically.
Credit markets keep our economy chugging along. Without it, businesses can't do business & our economy goes into a complete stalemate. This bailout is not a pure helping of others who took advantage of the system - it is to stop the financial crisis from crippling our entire economy. Not only that, but it isn't a true bailout - we're buying assets.
The country has already suffered drastically. Throwing money at bad investments isn't going to solve this problem. Time will tell which one of us is right on this. I hoping that I will be proven wrong...but I won't hold my breath.
This bailout is not a "solution" so much as a much needed band-aid. It injects liquidity into the market, and while it won't make the market better right away, it will stop it from becoming a depression. It won't be a bad investment if we get it for the right price, which we will. Time will not tell anything. The results will be too vague & will be able to be skewed to show whatever results you want to see. The economy is going to get worse, and you'll say that the bailout did nothing. I'll say that the economy would've been substantially worse without it, and neither one of us will be able to prove a thing.
How do you feel about the fact that 100's of billions of dollars are going to be handed over to foreign owned banks? Their reasoning behind this..."The world is a global market". Give me a break. What is it with our law makers and their insatiable desire to give "our" money away? We can not "buy" or way out of this mess. We must put an end to the socialist ideals that have brought us to this point. We must face the facts...Not every person can, or should, own their home. Not everyone can be considered "middle class". If everyone is the middle class, then we're all the lower class...that's a pretty simple concept to understand. Free markets equal prosperity. Overbearing, wasteful, knee jerk reactions by the federal government will not make for a better, stronger American economy.
Will it? We'll see. I'm hoping that $700,000,000,000 (Damn that's a lot of zero's) will go a long ways. So you're saying that the future of our country's economy is hinged on market speculation? That doesn't give me a warm fuzzy. You keep speaking as if all we're doing here is purchasing some low priced securities. That's not true...We're giving the feds permission to not only buy billions of dollars of worthless securities but to also step in and insure held securities against default. We're not only doing this for American owned banks, but for foreign owned financial institutions as well. We're telling these lenders (and I work for one of the largest) not to worry...we'll bail you out so you can continue to lend the money...without demanding that they change their obviously misguided lending guidelines. We need reform from the top down and I haven't heard one word about it. As a matter of fact, in anticipation of this bailout happening, lending guidelines are being lowered all across the country. It's just a matter of time before we're back to business as usual.
They aren't giving the money away. They are investing it. BIG DIFFERENCE. You are right, which is why I said this is only a band-aid. It's substantially more complicated than that, and my contention that this was necessary has nothing to do with people and their homes - it has to do with American businesses continuing to operate and drive our economy. This bailout is not overbearing. While it may be slightly wasteful & a knee jerk reaction, that doesn't make it not necessary. Free markets with proper regulation equal prosperity. This was our government's failing, and now action must be taken in order to make America a stronger economy.
No, I'm saying the cost to the country is dependent on market speculation. Whether the government gets a good or bad deal will not directly affect the economy, as we won't find out the results for another 15-30 years anway. These assets are not worthless. There are real tangible assets behind them. I'm not disagreeing about reform. It is ABSOLUTELY necessary, and I've heard plenty of talk about it. It just didn't need to happen overnight like the "bailout" did. If reform does not happen in conjuncture with the bailout then its effectiveness will be severely limited. It appears to me that your job has narrowed your focus on the current economic issues. It is much deeper and further reaching than that. When financial institutions don't lend money, our economy does not function. PERIOD.
Let me ask you a question. Let's say you had a few million laying around. Would you buy any of these securities...on the speculation that they may one day yield a profit? You are right..we're not giving money away...we're literally burning it. So how long before they come demanding another few hundred billion? Two months? Six months? Maybe a year? Remind me again...how many trillion are we already in debt? Drive our economy where? We are encouraging the very inappropriate activities that got us in this mess to begin with. Any bill should have been full of measures that would keep us from repeating recent history. This one doesn't and in the great tradition of our legislators, they've added hundreds of millions of dollars of even more wasteful spending. I agree with you..it will make a difference but only temporarily. We will have to face this sooner or later. I'd rather face it not being an additional 700 billion in the hole. You can't dig yourself out of a hole. This hole has gotten so deep we can barely see the surface. This bill will take us half way to china. Again..I agree with you...this was our government's failing. Where we disagree is that I strongly believe that the only way we will one day come out of this is if our government gets the hell out of the way. We keep sending the weasels in to make repairs to the hen house.
