Random-American

Bailouts, bailouts, bailouts, bailouts.  Just when the hell is anyone going to be held accountable for the banking and mortgage bailout boondoggles?  Did we bailout internet companies during the $800 billion bubble crash in the early 2000s?  Uh, no.  And now tech entrepeneurs with sound business plans are doing just fine. 

In recent years, Congress created a culture to encourage large banks to grant mortgages to persons who had no business signing the papers.  All persons involved took full advantage of it and now we’re potentially stuck with a $700 billion bill to be dropped on the heads of taxpayers.  The currently plan even suppostely calls for bailing out “student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other “troubled” assets held by banks.”  There are also additional calls for a $25 billion bailout for automakers on top of the $85 billion bailout of AIG Insurance, and even proposals for bailing out foreign banks. 

People in favor of the recent bailout plan just seem to think “Ok, government will bail them out and everything will be peachy keen,” but they neglect to mention one very important item; Just where in the hell is that money going to come from?  Just magically printing up $700 billion that we don’t have will only serve to drive down the value of a dollar into nether regions.  If you think oil and food prices are high now, should that happen, you ain’t seen nothin yet. 

Americans recently received ‘stimulus‘ checks, in order to prop up the economy.  But now those very same people are going to be told “Umm, yeah… we gave you back your own money that time, but now there’s going to be a huge tax bill  for every American on top of that.”  And somehow, in the middle of the talk of a bailout plan, the Democrats have come up with yet another stimulus plan??  Uhh, what??  Once again, where is that money going to come from?  Tax Americans to death, then give some back, then say ‘oops, we need another $1 trillion,’ then give another ’stimulus’ check?  Does any of this make any sense to anyone?  Who is being held accountable?

Congress certainly isn’t being held accountable.  They’re now trying to come up with a ‘fix’ for mess they laid the legislative groundwork for to begin with.  The CEOs of these failed lenders and mortgage brokers aren’t being held accountable.  Hell, they’re getting bonuses and multi-million dollar severance packages!   Wow, must be nice to completely run a company into the ground, skip out with millions of dollars, and leave the carnage for the taxpayers to deal with.  Plus, borrowers themselves who signed mortgage papers without being able to afford it from the get-go will be getting ‘help’ to allow them to stay in homes they can’t afford.  This is wrong, wrong, wrong, and flat out flippin wrong.

There should be absolutely NO bailout unless people are held accountable for their actions. 

If a Congressperson who helped create the environment that allowed the framework of this mess and ignored failure warning signs is still currently sitting on a committee overseeing the ‘fix,’ they should be removed immediatedly from that committee.  They clearly have a conflict of interest and no clue what the hell they’re doing. 

Back in 2005, John McCain warned of the impending disaster of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  He has now suspended his campaign and proposed to postpone Friday’s presidential debate in order to go to Washington and try to help fix this issue.  Senator Harry Reid (Democrat Majority Leader) has said McCain is trying to divert attention from his ‘failing’ campaign.  Uhh, Harry… He IS still a Senator.   Afterall, he is still being paid for being a Senator and tackling these issues is part of his job.  Obama, on the other hand, basically just said… “Errr, uhh…they’ll call if they need me.”  After referring to the banking crisis as “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression“ Obama doesn’t even plan to actually go back to Washington and do his job as a Senator?  His response is that he “told the leadership in Congress is that, if I can be helpful, then I am prepared to be anywhere any time.”  IF he can be helpful?  Wow, what leadership!  What obligation to duty.  Hope and change, change and hope, hope and change.

If a corporation’s board of directors votes to give millions of dollars to the CEO who ran the company into the ground, that company should not receive one red cent in bailout money.  Sorry, they made that bed and they should now have to lie in it.

If individual banks made completely asinine decisions to loan money to people who they knew had no means to pay it back, then that bank should not receive one dime of bailout money.  They made those decisions and now they need to fess up to it.  Repo the houses that aren’t being paid for, drop the price, and then put them on the market so responsible people can actually buy them at a decent price. 

If individuals knowingly bought homes they knew they should have known damn well they couldn’t afford, then sorry… you’re S.O.L.  Expecting current homeowners that responsibly pay their mortgages to now be stuck with additional tax bills to bailout irresponsible people is just flat out wrong.  Maybe someone who was previously being responsible and not buying a house they couldn’t afford will now be able to afford that house.  If lenders committed fraud when passing off sweetheart loan deals to unsuspecting borrowers, or cooked the books to keep investors’ money pouring in, then they need to be imprisoned for fraud.  Does Enron ring a bell?  Oh, and let’s not forget the role of illegal immigration in this mess either.

I agree with Newt Gingrich that the current bailout plan is wrong.  Dumping billions of dollars into a failure without without addressing and tackling the root causes is nothing more than whitewash and ignoring the real issue.  As has been said in the past by some random eloquent speaker, ‘You just can’t polish a turd.’

So, what happens now?  CEOs must be held accountable for their businesses and corporations.  If we’re wise, failing banks should be allowed to fail without free handouts.  New banks, and previously responsible banks, will rise to fill those gaps.  Remember that old free-enterprise supply and demand thing? 

People must be held accountable for their actions.  When you were a child, did you ever break a window with a baseball?  Odds are, if you were made to pay for the broken window out of your own allowance, and were taught personal responsibility, you understand why continuously bailing out failures is a bad idea.  If you were the child whose father just paid off the window for you, and you learned no lesson, then you’re probably all in favor of the bailout now.

This current banking/mortgage boondoggle fiasco is the baseball in the taxpayers’ window.  What happens next will determine if we as a nation will learn our lesson.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 8:28 pm and is filed under All Posts, History, Illegal Immigration/Border Security, Nanny State, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.