LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Give bailout to the people who deserve it

Scot Troter, Pahrump

Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 | 2:02 a.m.

Seven hundred billion dollars is about to be given to a very few businesses. There are roughly 304 million Americans. Every American could get $2,333. Think what would happen if everyone got that much money. Six hundred dollars last year was a nice start.

Mortgages could be caught up. That would help the banks have money to lend to businesses. Businesses would be able to borrow to invest. Americans would travel, helping the airlines. That would be a nice down payment on a car, helping the auto industry.

Americans could fix up their homes, and maybe even move away from the dangerous oceanfronts. If Americans did not want to move, they could at least get insurance. That would help the insurance industry.

Investments would take place, helping Wall Street. And if the government did not tax that money until next year, it would get a lot of that money back. Win, win, win.

Government: If you are going to give away that much money, give it to us! We are the ones who are going to have to pay it back anyway!

Discussion: 14 comments so far…

By tokaloshe

9/29/08 at 2:08 a.m.

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2,333 each eh? and you say give it to us! thats exactly what got us in this mess in the first place, hey scot, the last thing you need is another stimulus check.
By uddeboda

9/29/08 at 3:36 a.m.

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$700 bn if that will be the final figure, I doubt it, will hopefully be injected into the banks and financial institutions, and at the same time the taking over of them as well, to get insight and 100% transparency. CEOs and managerial positions salaries will be severely capped, no more golden handshakes, and hopefully shareholders will not get anything. Only then and ONLY THEN can the USAs finances be brought under control. This "bailout" is a copycat of the Swedish "bailout" in the early 90s, and the final outcome of that problem has proved very successful.
By PatriciaLV

9/29/08 at 3:58 a.m.

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"tokaloshe"

And what would be your suggestion? Would you rather it go to the people/institutions that got us into this mess in the first place? To the Merrills and Lehmans and AIGs and WaMus etc. who couldn't seem to manage the billions they had?

Seriously; what's YOUR suggestion? You're pretty quick to bash letter-writers and at least one journalist on this site, but I've yet to see anything come out of you but weak name-calling and sarcasm.

So, serve it up and let's see what you've got.
By vegasgt

9/29/08 at 7:10 a.m.

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I agree that the American people are more deserving of their own tax money that are banks and such, but the picture you paint is a bit too "rosey." Half of everyone would probably put their $2300 right into savings (yup, the banks would get the money anyway), and I'm not sure if you've asked around but people's mortgages are often much higher than $2300 a month (the reason we're in this whole mess), so that's a dud. And gas and plane tix are still ridiculously high so the travel probably wouldn't happen, either.

If the feds want to try to "fix" this, I think they need to broker a deal between the banks themselves, and not use any taxpayer money at all.
By tokaloshe

9/29/08 at 8:09 a.m.

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Patricia,
you are right i am being sarcastic, solution;
we need to elect better people and get rid of the ones who don't do their job. governments
at every level lack accountability and they lack ability.
Fancy marketing slogans like "vote for change" is more of the same fake garbage. obama said first thing when he gets in everyones gets a thousaand so you can go buy junior a new computer. Are we serious? has it gotten this bad? stimulus checks don't solve problems.
how about everyone make a small sacrifice? you don't run out and spend a thousand bucks to help solve every problem that comes along do you?
Patricia,
I am old school, taught that most of what you buy you should pay for it when you get it not borrow borrow borrow. when 20 year old kids
were out buying 500,000 dollar homes and 700,000 dollar homes, the charges to you and i as taxpayers went ka ching ka friggin ching big time. If you think 700 billion makes the problem go away you are dreaming. half of that might pay for nevada, maybe. you'll see baby, I predicted these bank failure problems back in late 2004. Our elected government is the problem, and we got hit bottoms to react, so come on bottom. wachovia just got bought by citibank today. banks don't have money to borrow right now and they have stopped borrowing from each other already, (which is bad). get ready patricia this has only begun and, if you can't laugh about it you'll never get through it.
great depression number 2 is at our doorstep.
This is an "america" problem. Don't you think
that "stimulus" checks as of recent years are a red flag? think about it? Is that being responsible? its ridiculous. I predict one year from today our country will be re-evaluating
priorities in a big way.
By JustTheFactsJack

9/29/08 at 8:24 a.m.

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At this point the global market is on the verge of collapse. Every other country in the world is either nationalizing their failing financial institutes, pumping money into their markets or both.

The current plan of only providing $250 billion will not be enough. The government is moving far too slow on this matter and may need to put up the entire $700 billion or more just to keep our financial markets afloat.

I did not obtain one of these bad loans and have been fiscally responsible and do not agree with bailing out Wall Street, however this is quickly turning into a bailout for our entire economy including Main Street.

Regardless to how we feel about this we are all going to have to bite the bullet in order to stave off a depression.

The US media seems to only focus on the US. To see the bigger picture you should check out foreign news websites. BBC is pretty good and in English.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Check out their business section to get an idea of how other countries are dealing with this crisis.
By tokaloshe

9/29/08 at 8:59 a.m.

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justthefactsjack;
excellent contribution.
By PatriciaLV

9/29/08 at 9:16 a.m.

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No arguments there, tokaloshe. Very well said & I really appreciate the response.

Electing new ones, IMHO, isn't really going to solve the problem because (again IMHO) they are ALL the problem in the first place.

The trouble is that the people who SHOULD BE in office are too smart to even waste their time.

So what do we do in the interim? My ideal is to let it all play out -- you know, let that infamous "free market" take care of itself. Unfortunately we do not live in a bubble and anything and just about everything that happens here in the good ol' US of A affects virtually everyone worldwide.

Letting it all play itself out would be irresponsible because we DO have an obligation to others.

Sorry; I don't have all the answers. Hell, I probably don't have ANY of the answers. I just know I'm tired of paying for corporate greed, mismanagement & malfeasance, same as I'm tired of paying for government greed, mismanagement & malfeasance, and the same as I'm tired of paying for PEOPLE'S greed, mismanagement & malfeasance.
By azsk8fan

9/29/08 at 10:51 a.m.

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How about this for a plan - have all the CEO's and other 'honchos' at the banks who collected exhorborant salaries and bonuses just give it all back - pay these people a 'reasonable wage' and forego the bonuses that they did absolutely nothing to deserve anyway. Maybe with all that money being kicked back into the banks coffer the government wouldn't need to give away our hard-earned tax dollars.
By Future2012

9/29/08 at 1:09 p.m.

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While lobbyist Obama's 20% Acorn slush fund was removed,

There still was not enough effort to move this into a FDIC like insurance program and away from the nationalizing the financial system.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi showed no leadership with her high charged floor speech today.

Unity leadership by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will never happen.

Nancy wanted Republican to vote for something that Democrats who generally support nationalizing industries could not support.
By PatriciaLV

9/29/08 at 2:22 p.m.

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Future, stop spamming the same nonsense on every thread.

We get it. You don't like Pelosi or Reid.

But just to qualify .... it was GEORGE W. BUSH (R) who wanted this, but couldn't manage to rally the troops.
By redferret

9/29/08 at 2:51 p.m.

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Yeah I really do love the originality of spamming every page with the same pointless concept even if it doesn't fit the page.
Good post Pat. Now, I'm still wondering why the republicans are up in arms against the bailout (which originated in the White House), they call it socialist, and then they blame democrats.
I told this to my logic robot Politicsbot 5.0, and no joke he said, "ERROR, ERROR, ERR...". He sputtered for a bit, smoke came out of his head, and then his head exploded. That's basically how I feel.
By azsk8fan

9/30/08 at 7:31 a.m.

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Redferret, good one :) The whole picture in my mind gave me a reason to feel happy today. LOL
By mtnman

9/30/08 at 2:42 p.m.

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Just to throw it out there (from current census figures):

$700 Billion =

$2293 / person
$3211 / adult
$6295 / household

We are talking about more than your usual token "stimulus" check. 6 grand ought to cover most mortgage payments I've ever seen. I suppose the point was to call attention to the huge amount of money we are talking about, and that the proposal represented a stimulus check to the bankers... not that the concept works in the long run, but hell, may as well give it to us to deposit!

The entire idea certainly misses the point. I'd suggest that this is happening as Bush's swan song for a reason. Obama is wrong about a lot of things, but he was right when he said that this represents the pinnacle of a failed economic philosophy. That philosophy is the one represented by the republican revolution (and every figurehead democrat since, including Obama), but conceived long before. It says that debt is as inconsequential as life is in the military -- it's all just paper. It proposes Capitalism as a system of government rather than economy. It was propagated by people who believed not that it represented sound economy, but that it would lead directly to what we see today. It is the final weeding out of competition, allowing the Morgan's, and the Rockefeller's of the world to cinch the nooses around our necks.

We can call it nationalization in this case rather than corporate cronyism; but they are one and the same. Where do you think our politicians work their day jobs? Either way, it's the opposite of the free market utopia that many conservative supporters were looking for: it is Fascism. Half of our congress is giddy as schoolgirls at the thought of handing the keys to the treasury over to the private sector (or vice-versa). The markets are groaning while the induced final hemorrhage of monopolization and consolidation takes place. The outcome is global in its reach and is likely inevitable with or without Uncle Sam's bonus dollars. US taxes are based on Federal Reserve policies phonier than Andrew Fastow's books. The reality is that the bailout proposal represented more than the total tax revenue of 1970, and almost 1/3 of today's, but they may as well have asked for 700 trillion -- it's just paper!

They don't care about the chaos; in fact they welcome it. The destruction leaves even less hands in the cookie jar. We've seen this coming for years, and I don't believe there is a political solution within the framework that any "first world" country offers today. Massive revolution is the alternative.

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