The Big Bailout

Are you angry about this? You should be. The simple sound bite version is that there is nothing about the government (and therefore the taxpayers) taking on a bad debt that makes it not a bad debt, which means that we are all going to be paying for a series of bad business decisions rather than the people who made those bad decisions. At the end of the day, the majority of the lawmakers decided that it was more important to keep powerful business interests happy than the people they ostensibly serve.

Before I continue, I'll admit that I'm a long way from being an expert. I was one course short of qualifying to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree in economics, so I do know something about the subject, but that was over twenty years ago. I do remember enough of the implications of large banks going under to understand the impact on the larger economic picture, but you can't tell me that there was no other way. I've done only the slightest bit of research and found several more workable suggestions as to how to address the problem without putting the burden on the taxpayers, and I'm certain that the gentlemen in Congress have better informational resources than I do.

The laws of economics, like the laws of nature, can only be bent so far before you have to pay the price. Karma can be a bitch. There is no magic solution here. Things will correct themselves in time; it's only a question of how long it will take, what the full extent of the damage will be, and who is damaged in the fallout. And the majority of the members of Congress has decided that the answer to the last question is the taxpayers. The answer is an old one: "Vote 'em out!" It's the only weapon we have, and we need to show that enough people still care about what is happening that they'll have to pay a price for not listening to the voters.