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Cranky Swamp Yankee

News & Issues > A Taxpayer's Complaint
 

A Taxpayer's Complaint


Okay. Help me out here. I need the knowledge and wisdom from the Conservative Right to show me the light. (Being a lowly liberal, I am obviously brain-damaged to the extent that some things about the current economic crisis in this country don’t make sense to me.)
AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac and other big investment firms and banks in this country were on the verge of going belly-up recently due to the really stupid lending practices that they employed. They gave mortgages to individuals who, to be perfectly honest, had no business owning homes because of their financial status.
Now, I’ll admit that some of this was the fault of "do-gooder" liberals who thought that everybody should own their own homes. I agree with that sentiment
However, we shouldn’t be talking "instant gratification" here when $300,000 loans are concerned. I moved into my first house when I could afford the mortgage payments, and I had to get my dad to co-sign for me before the loan was approved.
If the folks in Washington wanted everybody to realize the Great American, White Picket Fence Dream, they would have been better off providing more job opportunities to folks in order to help them afford mortgages rather than just lowering the mortgage applicant criteria.
These freebies are what got us into this huge financial mess that we’re in right now.
And the large, conservative banks and investment firms that churned out these loans are alsoto blame. They KNEW that these mortgages would fail! They’re smart folks, and they KNOW economics! (It’s their BUSINESS to know these things!) They HAD to know that what they were actually funding were FORECLOSURES, not mortgages! They could have declined these applicants. They could have refused to issue these loans.
But they did not.
Why?
Why do you think?
Greed and short-sightedness. To my rather infantile, liberal way of thinking, it’s as simple as that!
The folks sitting on top of the pile at AIG raked in BILLIONS of dollars in personal income from loans that they knewwere bad from the get-go!
They knew that sooner or later the piper would have to be paid! They knew what they were doing was going to be detrimental to the national economy! They KNEW it! They couldn't NOT know it! But, as long as they were raking in millions in personal income, they didn’t care. (Talk about the serpent eating it’s tail!)
And now, we, the taxpayers, have got to bail them out to the tune of $700,000,000,000!!!!!!
According to the latest U.S. Census, there are 301,621,157 of us living in these United States and Puerto Rico. To keep things simple (Remember, I’m a liberal!) let’s round that number down to 300,000,000. Well, when you divide $700,000,000,000 in bailout money by 300,000,000 citizens, it comes out to $2,333.33 each. That means the bail-out is going to cost every man, woman and child living in the U.S. and it territories $2,333.33!!!!
Now, I am a businessman. I am part owner in a small but lucrative manufacturing business. If that business went belly-up, there would be no bail-outs. My thirty-five employees and I would be out of jobs with no incomes. That’s just the way it is. So my partners and I make educated decisions to insure that the business is fairly lucrative today while, at the same time, attempting to secure it’s future.
And I understand that the companies in question in this fiscal debacle are so huge that their failures would provide a crushing blow on our national economy and have a devastating effect our standard or living and our lifestyles.
I know that this bail-out is a necessary evil created by greedy human beings.
The bailout package is now being hammered out by congress, but there is one problem. The Democrats want a clause added to the bill that restricts the incomes and benefits of the officials who head these failed companies.
The Republicans are balking at this. (Something about this should be a free-market economy! Can you believe it? If this were a free market economy, there would be NO BAIL-OUT WHATSOEVER and these companies would simply be allowed to fail!)
Our government is supposed to be a representative government. ..by the people, for the people and of the people. My question is, who are these people opposing this income-restricting clause representing? If they were truly representing the people who elected them to office, then there would be no question about regulating how many millions the top executives of these companies make! If I made bad business decisions, my company would suffer and so would my bank account! And yet, these corporate suits don’t have to suffer the consequences of their own greed? (And, trust me, I doubt that they will suffer very much! Instead of receiving a $10,000,000 bonus this year, the CEO of AIG may only receive a $5,000,000 bonus.)
If it were up to me, each one of these fine, upstanding ladies and gentlemen would be brought up on charges. (And if found guilty, I would punish them by placing them in mirrored prison cells where they would be forced to look themselves in the eye all day long!)
I have a slight problem handing over my $2,333.33 to these companies. I have a HUGE problem with our representatives in Congress putting my tax dollars into the pockets of the corporate executives who created this gigantic financial problem in the first place!
But, as I said, what do I know? I’m just a lowly, stupid liberal. Perhaps a few conservative Republicans could explain to me what the problem is with making sure that the $700,000,000,000 of tax money actually goes to correcting the problem.
Or do they honestly (Poor choice of words, I know!) think that a portion of that money should go to lining the golden pockets of the men and women in the power suits?

posted on Sept 23, 2008 7:32 AM ()

Comments:

I am with you in that I firmly believe that the CEO's of these financial institutions both on Wall Street and in the banking sector should be subject to criminal prosecution. They made $30, 40, 60 MILLION a year perpetrating this fiasco!
comment by dragonflyby on Oct 3, 2008 1:19 PM ()
Are you sure you are a "lowly liberal"? You almost sound like a Republican to me. I am a liberal Republican, I think. I believe in some of the "give away" programs and other, I regret.
comment by nenah on Sept 30, 2008 8:53 AM ()
Well, greed... one of the seven deadly sins! And, the love of money... the root of all evil. Maybe we should hope there is a heaven and hell. Then these people would see some come-uppance. (That still doesn't look right.) In the meantime, I suppose some of us will have to become thieves to get the money to pay our share... $2,333 times however many people in the family is a HUGE amount in some families!
comment by sunlight on Sept 27, 2008 8:21 PM ()
Excellent, excellent article. Too bad it's too late for you to run for president
comment by shesaidwhat on Sept 26, 2008 4:17 AM ()
This was an excellent statement of the problem. Now, let's kick the rascals out. McCain is balking at the bailout but he has Cindy's millions in addition to his own to take care of him. The bailout is a necessary evil but extremely repugnant to me.
comment by elderjane on Sept 24, 2008 1:42 PM ()
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not(did not) make loans. Being a quasi government institution, they bought the worthless garbage loans issued by other lenders, banks and mortgage companies. 95% of these loans should never been issued - they were made to people who should have known - but maybe were really too stupid to realize that a minimum wage career of McD's burger flipping will not be a $100K income after 5 years. These worthless and demoralizing programs have been around for decades, started by and under pres. Jimmy Carter - Community Action Commission - which eliminated illegal inner-city red-lining, but developed into the mess we now have. In the late 1990's, most lending institutions foresaw this impending disaster, but when they proposed sweeping changes or some (more) self regulation, or just a return to the old tried and true method of granting home loans only to qualified borrowers, they were threatened with legal hassles from U.S.Attorney Janet Reno and her office.
comment by oldfatguy on Sept 23, 2008 8:34 PM ()
Today we find out who is writing the bailout terms:

The Lobbyists! The damn crooks who put us in this hole are writing the bill! The lobbyists of the banking and investment bunch are doing the details.

It is way past time for the revolution, friends.
comment by jondude on Sept 23, 2008 4:48 PM ()
The post as well as the comments were so very enlightening--and entertaining in a sad way. As Kristi says, there are so very many good points, and I find that you have said so well what many have been feeling.
comment by angiedw on Sept 23, 2008 1:53 PM ()
This latest crisis for American taxpayers comes courtesy of eight years of President Bush's hands-off, Big-Business-knows-best policies. Even in the Clinton era, the Republican controlled Congress extolled the virtues of deregulation and actively undid all the protections and oversight they could get their greedy hands on.

Republicans in Congress, of course, have been the President's cohorts in waging an economy with rising unemployment, lower stock earnings, and grave portends for the future.

The real antidote to more taxpayer misery is change on Election Day — in the White House and in Congress — where Americans should bid a hearty goodbye not only to the President, but also to those who have been his chief enablers.
comment by marta on Sept 23, 2008 12:07 PM ()
Blame is shared all around. Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman, holds much of it. The laissez faire boys in the current administration hold much of it, escpecially Chris Cox and his mob. The investment bankers who bundled mortgages into bonds and sold them on Wall Street made gazillions before the failures. The drop in real estate prices is also to blame, as it caused the imbalances.

People need to know that what goes up also will come down, whether it is real estate, the stock markets, or the economy in general. Nothing ever keeps going up except prices.

The measures being debated should include caps on the salaries and bonuses of CEO's of the firms that we are bailing out. AND, it should include a clause that from this day forward NO MORE bailouts will be stuck to the taxpayers.

And, oh yes, Chris Cox and Ben Bernanke should be immediately fired.
comment by jondude on Sept 23, 2008 10:26 AM ()
I have said all along *both sides* are to blame for this. As it started while Clinton was still in office. It is a mess. I remember in the 90's where people were getting into houses left and right here where we live that they couldn't afford. A lot of those folks no longer live in those houses. We have been here almost 16 years now.
comment by texastar on Sept 23, 2008 9:27 AM ()
Watering down the criteria for mortgage applicants seems like the economic equivalent of affirmative action and no-child-left-behind and other "equal opportunity" entitlement programs that result in a depreciation of the worth of the work force or the education or whatever is being made available without the necessity of earning it the old fashioned way. So now our economy has tanked just like our educational system and the people who "benefited" from the easy money are no better equipped to handle the responsibility than the people who got jobs on the basis of something less than standard qualifications.
comment by looserobes on Sept 23, 2008 9:22 AM ()
Honest and politician are two words that don't go in the same sentence.

It's all about greed.
comment by stiva on Sept 23, 2008 8:37 AM ()
The Republicans are balking at this. (Something about this should be a free-market economy! Can you believe it? If this were a free market economy, there would be NO BAIL-OUT WHATSOEVER and these companies would simply be allowed to fail!)

That's a great point.

This is all very well written... I can't wait to see the comments!
comment by kristilyn3 on Sept 23, 2008 7:56 AM ()
Hey, I just posted some on a similar topic. Great minds think alike. Those businesses were allowed to get too large, and their affect on the economy too great. This sort of thing was why Anti-trust laws were important (republicans will probably say "what is that?") But when one company gets that big, that its failure would be that great to an economy, then it is TOO BIG. And what do they think will happen with entities like Bank of America buying out the others that are in trouble if the same happens to it?

Part of what happened I think is predatory lending patterns, along with this massive deregulation they promoted. Phil Gramm was a big player in this whole mess, and it goes all the way back to laws instated after the great depression. Funny how now McCain is balking about CEO pay all of a sudden while people like Carly Fiorina are at his side...
comment by ekyprogressive on Sept 23, 2008 7:46 AM ()

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