Just Another Trillion Bucks

It's kind of amazing to me how easily the worlds "700 Billion Dollar Bailout" rolls off the tongue of politicians and media talking heads. They say it as if it's not even a big deal. Normally not even mentioning that this comes hot on the heals of hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts for AIG and Lehman. So, once this thing with the $700 Billion goes down, we will have blown over $1 Trillion dollars on this mess. And most of it we'll never get back.

The bailouts of the big companies, in the form of loans, was bad enough, as it amounts to a Government takeover of a private sector company, not something that is supposed to happen in our system of Government. But what is worse is this new $700 Billion bailout, because this one is literally just throwing money away. The Government is talking about buying $700 Billion in bad mortgages from financial institutions to free up money in those companies to issue more mortgages.

OK, let's see, we're talking about buying bad mortgages, which are bad for a reason, which means that the money won't be coming back from them, otherwise, these companies wouldn't be looking to get rid of them. So that means that the money is just going down the drain.

What's even worse is the point of this is to free up money for more mortgages, which means that the companies can make even more of these same kinds of mortgages so that they will end up right back in this same mess in a few years. And don't think that they have learned their lessons and won't do this again because they don't have a choice in the matter, policies and regulations in place by the Government are what forces them to make mortgages that shouldn't be made, and we can't count on Congress to change those regulations, because they don't want to.

Congress wanted to look good by making it easier for more and more people to own their own homes, even if it meant that people were buying homes and getting mortgages that they couldn't afford. Keeping this trend going into the future certainly isn't going to help.

So, on top of all of the other problems that present themselves with the huge bailout is that it actually ensures that things will get worse in the future, and not solving anything.

We've got to get some good people into Congress and end this madness.

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Update: 5:15PM

I have written to both of Florida's Senators, and my Congressman, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The text of my message was as follows:

Senator Martinez (Nelson, Rep Weldon/Pelosi Respectively),
As a citizen of the United States, and Florida in particular, I implore you to vote, and fight, against this $700 Billion that is being proposed to be sent swirling right down the drain, as I'm sure you know as well as I do that this is money that will never be seen again, otherwise, the banks would not be looking to unload it.

What we need to do is to stop the bailouts and let the free market take the hit and recover on it's own. Yes, I am aware that this will cause pain, but I would rather have some pain now, and stability down the road, than alleviation of a little pain now, and a total collapse down the road, which is what this proposed package will cause.

Please vote NO!

Thank you,
Matt Wiser