A) We don't have any money.
We're going to have to borrow to get the $700+ billion. This, on top of the money we've borrowed in the past, pushing our debt to truly insane levels. We already owe more than any other country on the planet, and this would nearly double that amount.
We are destitute.
We have no money.
And frankly, we need something like this to wake up. We don't ask enough questions about things. We're not cynical or skeptical enough by any stretch. We've been living off the kindness of strangers so damn long that we've forgotten how to earn a living.
i don't want a bailout of financial institutions. If anything, i want the government to mandate a readjustment of home property mortgage values meaning that the $1.2m McMansion you bought 120 miles from the city is now worth $200K. (Take the Materials and Labor cost to rebuild from the insurance estimates, plus averaged land value, replace the gold lined bathtubs with standard, and ca-ching: proper home value) Lose money off the deal? Too bad, so sad, but you get to keep your home (and yeah, the amount of principal paid is likewise adjusted, so no, you haven't paid it off in full yet either). This will mean that you (and i) will lose a horrific amount of money from various trusts and funds based off of real-estate. Gone like the unsecured, unguaranteed, past performance is not an indicator of future performance, funds we signed up with declared themselves to be. It also means that should you decide to opt into the government forgiving the greed part of your home purchase decision, that's the max price you can sell the property for. Oh dear! Looks like you'll need to find some other way to invest for retirement, doesn't it? i recommend savings accounts
This is why i live in a three room ranch within city limits in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Yes, my home value has been hit, and probably will be hit again, but i guarantee i'm not going to lose as much as someone who "had to live in Stockton but man, what a house i got for the money!"
There's a reason that Gran'ma used to keep her life savings in a coffee can. It's because she, along with most of her generation, learned a really hard lesson. Because of those lessons, you're not out selling apples on the street corner yet, but apparently, we hadn't learned enough to keep from doing other really stupid things.
Perhaps it's time we got schooled again.
Was there a B)?
Honestly, my gut reaction is the same, but the practical implications of it are just not acceptable.
Actually, yes. There were several other points as well ranging from the fact that most previous bail outs haven't gone 100% wonderful either (Savings & Loan, Chrysler, arguably New York, etc.) to the fact that even with a bail out, there's still no real plan being put in place to avoid this from happening again in a different sector.
Then I realized that the one thing that America excels at is overreacting to calamity, and that I wanted a blog post that was under 700+ billion words.
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I am thinking quite a bit about the financial collaps hitting several parts of the planet to various degrees. Maybe it's time to make some overdue adjustments to the whole market? I am a fan of the economical concepts used by Kim Stanley Robinson in the second and third volume of his Mars trilogy; they're hardly brand new ideas, and some of them are actually already enacted in some existing places.
My parents taught me how to keep check of my finances. Turns out that not investing thousands of bucks in dubious stock was indeed a good idea.
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Ah, I'm babbling. Nevermind me.