Ok, I have to say something...

Well, what does it take to pass a bill in congress? Nope, not bi-partisan compromise or negotiations. Earmarks. Shocking! There are over $100 billion worth of earmarks in this bill. Now, I don't know about you, but the fact that those things are in there makes this seem much less 'dire' than it was made out to be. Not only that, but it absolutely infuriates me that both of our presidential candidates have blasted Washington for the reckless use of earmarks and both of them voted for this bill without raising any kind of concern for the addition of those earmarks. Moving on...

I would like to point out something very crucial to this whole issue that most people don't really like to bring up. The crux of this crisis is greed. Greed from lenders, credit card companies, and [shocker!] the American consumer. Yes, this problem is largely our own fault. People buy what they can't afford and now we have to get them out of this. I have little sympathy for people who bought a house for $400,000 and could only afford $150,000. Yes, they were in part a victim of lenders (mainly Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) giving them these loans. But they still signed that dotted line on an adjustable rate loan for something they knew that if that rate was anything but what it was (sub-prime, which is completely unrealistic), they would not be able to make payments. There is no excuse for ignorance. Period.

Now lets move on to the corporate sector. MUCH of this has come from the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They put together these loan packages that were completely unreasonable and sold them to other banks, which is now why we have to bail them out. But don't be fooled by vagueness. We are going to buy "toxic assets" of foreign banks too. As long as they have a subsidiary operating in the US, this bill allows us to buy those assets from them. So, everyone from CitiGroup to Chinese national banks can receive funds. That bothers me a bit.

Naturally, the democrats are heralding this as a victory for their party as it was the evil republicans who got us into this mess to start off with. Lets take a small look back in time for just a moment.



Despite some clear bias in my speech, I am not really advocating one party over another (at this particular moment). I am advocating that American people pay attention to what is going on in politics all the time; not just in an election year or time of crisis. You will never get clear facts from either side during an election year. Ignorance is never an excuse.


Lets be real people, we the taxpayer will pay for this. I know, I know, our "leaders" in congress have been telling us over and over that we will not. Heck, we might even get money back. It could happen, I give them that, but I seriously doubt that. If our treasury buys these assets at book value (which may happen; there isn't a market for these things, thus no market value. But that's a little complicated and beyond the scope of my point) then not only will we not get any money back, but we will be paying more that the $700 billion that has just passed. Much of me very much opposes government once again sticking its nose where it doesn't belong, but the other part of me thinks that this has gotten so bad that we have no choice but to hope that our government can fix this; or at least get it started.