Ugh...

I've recently found it difficult to prep my brain for creative work with all of the problems going on in our country right now. Years ago it was the current administration's rush to capture the "wmds" and oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq. They had everyone up in arms and scared for their lives like it was going to be their last days on Earth.

Fast forward to the present day, $700 billion later (one of the estimations for the total cost of the Iraq war: the number is fitting for this situation for comparison), and I am witnessing the same scare tactics by the same administration about the financial crisis this country is facing. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson is asking for $700 billion, American tax payer dollars, to bailout the failing banking/lending/financial institutions who have gone unregulated for years instead of letting them declare bankruptcy. Mr. Paulson claims that this would be devastating to the economy: recession, millions of jobs lost, decrease in GDP, and credit would cease to exist. He paints a picture of armaggedon.

The aspect of this situation that irritates me the most is the fact that the people who are saying "there is a crisis, we need the money ASAP or the economy will shred itself, etc, etc, yada, yada, yada, etc" are the same people who said everything was fine last week. How do we go from "everything is ok" to "economic armaggedon"? I find the timing of the revelation of this "crisis" suspicious since Congress (the body responsible for legislating US budgetary expenditures) will be adjourning in a few days so that everyone can go home to campaign for local/state elections. Mr. Paulson had a plan ready before he even came out to talk about it: $700 billion (free money), no oversight, no regulation, no transparency, and no strings attached to bailout the financial institutions.

The way I see it, this was all planned. Any senator or congressman who is the least bit humane would say no to voting for such bill, especially since the money would be coming from the people who elected them. Since they are adjourning soon for campaign elections and you've got a high ranking government official, Paulson, panicking and telling us the world is going to end (using the same scare tactics used so often and so deceivingly by this administration) we have the United States legislative branch running around like the Capitol Building is on fire scared into thinking that if we don't sign away this $700 billion its all going to collapse.

Surprisingly, there have been those that have raised their hands and said "but what do the people get out of this? How does it benefit them?" These are the good senators and congressman, republican, democrat, and independent alike, who have hearts, and use their power for the will of the people for whom they were elected for. They will be tagged as officials who don't care about the people, as the ones who dragged their feet for "political reasons" but everyone will know when the dust settles that these were the ones who made the right choice. They will be smeared and politicized but they will have to weather the storm.

I have faith in these people that they won't let their fellow colleagues be scared into giving a gargantuan chunk of change away to the people who caused this problem in the first place without their being an explicit explanation of how it will benefit those who are paying for it, the American tax payers.

I more than likely don't have a complete grasp on whats going on. There are things that I am aware of though. When someone doesn't have money to pay for debt, an American tax payer for example, he/she files for bankruptcy. This person's assets are chopped up into parts and sold as scrap. This person's life is basically ruined. The banks and lending institutions know this is a consequence, they lobbied for legislation making it harder for people to escape it in the first place (this is a factor in the housing crisis: it became cheaper for people to default on house mortgages then to declare bankruptcy. The banks had to take on the mortgages...which leads us to today!). So when I hear that these big companies and corporations are being bailed out with tax payer money it makes me think "well how come they don't do that for normal people?" They're so eager to give the money away to these companies but not back to the hard working people trying to live the "American Dream" (which includes owning a home...unless you can't pay your mortgage). I know that by handing these institutions a check we are, as a country, privatizing profit and socializing debt. That is a big problem. Very big.

Its hard to wrap my mind around it. Whos right and whos wrong? I don't know and I'm sure no one really knows. Its scary to think that the people running the show who are "in the know" probably "don't know" what their doing. Everything is a big experiment and I feel they have nothing to lose because there are no consequences for their actions. Its frustrating knowing that my future is in the hands of people conducting an experiment.

I say we let the institutions declare bankruptcy. The economy and free market will heal itself, over time without government intervention. As for the institutions, they are being investigated for fraud and illegal business practices by the FBI. Anyone reading into this should research the Great Depression (New Deal as well) and the Savings & Loans crisis of the 1980s & 90s (Keating 5). There are also various points in our history when banks and lending institutions were deregulated by the Federal government. I encourage you to look into that as well. It all has relevance to today's shitstorm.

I'll write more later, I'm tired.