If your mind is too open, your brain will fall out. Warning: Names, identities, descriptions, and pictures have been changed and/or used to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. PollyPeoria should not be used or quoted as a source for your senior college thesis.

Saturday, September 20

Oh Brother Can You Spare a Dime....

Or better yet 700 billion dollars? On my way to work Wednesday morning a 20 billion dollar bailout was being considered. As my lunch hour rolled around, NPR was talking 40 billion. During my commute home it was up to 60 billion. Friday it was up to 85 billion. This fine Saturday morning we are now up to a $700 BILLION bailout. Jeeze. Who is coming up with these numbers? It doesn't matter. I just balanced my checkbook. I ain't got it.

$700 BILLION?! Hell, why not just provide winning lotto numbers, pixie dust, a pony, and a rainbow to every American citizen?

My grandfather, a Great Depression survivor, keeps a lockbox of cash and gold coins underneath his bed and a loaded hand gun in his nightstand drawer. I've always thought it a quaint, naive, sad, and paranoid practice. After watching Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and industry giant AIG either bite the dust or require government intervention in order to avoid doing so, Grandpa's lockbox is looking like the most sound financial policy of them all. The beauty is in it's simplicity and the fact that Grandpa's plan is rooted in the rarest of all commodities: COMMON FRIGGIN' SENSE.

I'm disappointed that McCain's answer is more and bigger government. The financial market is collapsing. The answer? Another government agency. Not very Republican of McCain. Don't we have a few regulatory agencies that are suppose to be preventing this sort of massive downfall? SEC? FDIC? The Justice Department? On the other hand, Obama is far worse, his answer seems to be to completely take over and oversee the financial market. Might as well vote for Nader.

Huh. What everyone seems to agree upon is that this crisis was brought about by poor lending policies. Why not learn from our mistakes and apply minimal regulations at lower levels so that the whole thing doesn't super nova later down the line? Why not make a law stating that only X percent of a lending institution's loans can be high risk. Why not tell AIG that they can only insure only X percent of high loans? Why not tell loan officers that if they give loans to folks who have bad credit, no assets, and no job that they will be shot on site? Is anyone on Wall Street over the age of forty? Do any of them remember the savings and loan crisis of the 1980's?

Don't get me wrong, high risk mortgages have a place. People who scrap their way up from welfare to work, low income but responsible individuals starting a new business, bright students who come from poor households seeking a college education. As a taxpayer, these are high risk loans I'm willing to back.

I am not willing to subsidize some greedy fat cat who doesn't understand that a leveraged buyout is debt, pure and simple. I don't appreciate bailing out a company that was allow to grow so huge that as a society we cannot allow it to fail. Wall Street brats should understand capitalism. Seriously, if you graduate from Wharton Business school, shouldn't you know that as a player in the free market, failure is most certainly an option?

Future generations will likely be financing the biggest bailout since the Great Depression. Heads should roll. I look forward to seeing some indictments. In the meantime I'm off to Walmart to buy a lockbox and a gun.

9 comments:

Randall said...

Hello again Polly. Glad to see you back but sad to see you support McCain and since you support Republicans it is sad to see you expect some criminal charges. This whole mess is Bush, Greenspan, and the Republican party's fault and I for one am not going to give them another chance. Think about it, Palin a heartbeat away from President?? My grandmother has the same qualifications.

Anonymous said...

Peoria AntiPundit: Of what state is your grandmother the governor?

pollypeoria said...

Antibrain,

And you feel safer with Obama at the wheel? Every election he has ever won was a fluke. Obama panders about change and then picks the biggest Washington insider there was, Biden. Biden has never had a job outside D.C. Take a look at his relationship with credit card companies. Not to mention that he couldn't get a 1% of the vote when he tried for President... both times. Obama is a mindless patsy. Biden is a scummy insider. Palin is bright, accomplished, and could kick your ass with a baby on her hip. So there.

Anonymous said...

LMAO on the last line!

Randall said...

Palin thinks Africa is a country! By now you have heard the blunders from her mouth and we know they far out number anything Biden has said.

Thank your lucky stars Obama won.

CJ: You have to be a governor to be qualified for President? I doubt that.

Randall said...

By the way, Palin's pregnant 17 year old daughter (unmarried) shows the quality mother Palin is but, she also told her daughter she was having the baby. A CHOICE she (Palin) wants to take away from every woman in the US.

Anonymous said...

Peoria AntiBrain,

I SO call bullshit. One can be a very good parent and have a child who makes a mistake. Once Bristol became pregnant, she is emanicipated under the law, and free to have an abortion. Palin believes that human life is precious even when it isn't convenient, and that it is important to do the right thing even when isn't easy. It's called taking responsibility and she was able to pass it on to her daughter, which proves that Sarah Palin is an excellent mother.

Anonymous said...

AntiBrain,

Palin did know Africa is a continent. You are choosing to side with anonymous sources/sexist lies.

Obama is a snob and a moron. Obama believes that there are only 47 states in the Union. You can WATCH it for YOURSELF on YouTube. Just google "Obama 47 States." If Palin had screwed up that big she would have been forced off the ticket. Obama didn't release his grades from Columbia because they were crappy and didn't justify his admission to Harvard Law- affirmative action at its worst, no one can find a copy of his senior thesis, including Columbia -suspicious. There isn't one signed article by Obama for the Law Review at Harvard which is unheard of. He got his seat in the State Legislature by challenging the signatures of his opponent, and Obama would have never won his U.S. Senate seat had Jack Ryan's divorce records not been leaked. Read Obama's Audacity of Hope (a poorly written 200 page speech), and you will find that he readily admits he has been gifted but has not earned his resume. He repeatedly lied during the campaign. What happened to public financing for the election?Obama is sleazy and a snob and by his picks for Vice President and his cabinet he has already proven that he isn't capable or competent to hold the office. I give him two years before he is impeached. Then we will have 16 years of glorious Republican rule. Until then, start stockpiling canned goods, everybody.

Randall said...

ouch! It's Peoria Anti Pundit BTW. I guess, like you tried to point out, it depends on who is tracking the small shit. By golly!

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