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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 ()
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