Financial Shell Games
The big news of the day comes straight from the House: the $700 billion dollar bail-out has been deep-sixed. Does this mean the light of reason is shining in Washington? Hardly. Probably even less so now than ever before. The American people work hard for those tax dollars. Giving them away to bailout institutions which have made stupid moves in the market is tantamount to highway robbery.
Did the American people create this disaster? A small fraction of a percent did. It’s the rest of us who are being asked to pony up a lot of money to repair the problem. What do we get for it? Nothing, with the possibility that this money may not even fix the problem at all and the bailout money may only delay the inevitable: the collapse of a number of institutions, huge sell-offs and who only knows what else.
There is an old saw that says those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach. I say we need to revise it: those who can, do, those who can’t, run for political office. Some of the sharpest financial minds in the world work on Wall Street. Some of those minds helped create this mess. Now some politicians think they can out smart the geniuses and fix a mess they know little about. Maybe it’s just me, but when the car breaks down, I don’t go to my local commissioners for help. I go to a mechanic. A lot of times I go to several to get a good deal. Now we have a few “economists” and “experts” advising the Bush administration (fountain of wisdom that it is) to bail-out the industry. I have heard dozens, if not hundreds, of experts on radio, tv, and the interweb saying this is a huge mistake.
A lot of the experts agree that the market should be free to move as the chips fall. If these same companies were making windfall profits they would not be in Washington trying to share it with the American people. Why have privatized profits if we are going to have socialized losses? Others argue that these companies are too huge to allow them to fail. Why the hell are we letting companies get this big? Maybe it’s time to limited company size. If you want to grow bigger then spin-off some divisions into other public companies and move on.
That’s my rant for the week. Thanks for listening and thanks for being patient. I have been offline with some personal issues for a while now but I will try to post a little more regularly from now on. Contact your local Representative and sound off. Let them know how you feel. Feel free to share your thoughts, rants, and other ideas in the comments.
