The Stimulus Plan and Bailouts are jokes

Let me warn you, this is a bit of a rant. It seems as though our politicians are fixated on quick fixes. Hell, if a Nigerian Prince sent them an email saying he had $100 billion he needed to get out of the country and all our congress needed to do was send $2 million bucks, I think we'd be seeing half these idiots on the front steps of House prattling on about why they sent money to Nigeria....

The only way to get out of our current mess is to admit some mistakes and attempt to get everyone in our country working. Oh yes, and maybe we should put a few more dollars into education....

Let me ask you dear internet folks, what shred of evidence have you seen that will lead anyone to believe that pouring money into AIG or Citigroup will yield a single new job for American workers?

I happen to agree with Dave Ramsey. At the beginning of this mess, Dave Ramsey said we shouldn't give out a dime in bailout anything. We can't track it and Citigroup can't seem to track it either (except when their executives check their paystubs). Citigroup sure will punish you (but good) if you miss a credit card payment though. They seem to know where every dime is for every loan they've ever made. We are throwing money away dear taxpayers.

There is no oversight. There is no goal and more importantly, I don't know where all of this cash is going. Yet it is going to people who are supposed to know exactly where it is going (bankers).

This whole thing is a scam and I pissed the whole Obama administration is buying into this utter bullshit. It's all a quick fix that isn't fooling the other 19 countries in the G20. And it shouldn't fool you either my fellow Americans. We shouldn't be borrowing money from our kids, we shouldn't be trusting these Wallstreet motherfuckers any farther than we can throw them and we shouldn't be spending money on savings banks or fucking with Afghanistan.

Banks and brokerages were never supposed to co-pollinate. Banks are supposed to be safe places where people put their money and it gets loaned out to do real things like build homes and schools. It was never supposed to be a fucking casino!

By the way everyone, the market to market legislation seems to be flying through Congress. You do know that this is every bit a clusterfuck like the Gramm-Lilley act, right? Market to Market is great for businesses that do financial speculation and is incredibly bad for people that have to value assets those businesses purchase. Just an FYI....

Obama, is this what we have to look forward to for the next four years? This isn't why we elected you.

The bottom line of this rant - No quick fixes folks. Everyone needs to have a job. And the Nigerian guys that send out all of those spam rip off letters also happen to work near or around Wall Street!

Marc

Hint - maybe it's time we stop buying imported shit from China and Singapore built by slave labor? Maybe our government should put some trade sanctions in place? Maybe our government should start to tax the shit out of companies that build all of their shit in slave labor countries? Maybe the government should take scumbags like AIG and just plain grab them by the balls and put them out of business (or let them go out of business). Enough already.

Let me paint you a picture.

The Wall Street Corporate Welfare Package is almost ready to go. It will feed the American addiction for fast fixes to complex problems.

Remember, we don't even know the right questions yet: how much will it really cost, where did the Wall Street collapse come from and how will it really effect normal, middle and low income people?

So let me paint you a picture.

The American Economy is like a table. It gets held up by quite a few legs and is fairly resilient and strong. Think of a hardwood table made of Amish barnwood from Pennsylvania. They are built incredibly well and last hundreds of years.

We have this piece of legislation to save Main Street/Wall Street that seems to be getting "bipartisan" support. Thus John McCain and Joe Lieberman should be having epileptic fits right in the middle of congress. Bipartisan is a new, favorite word for politicians. I have to think it means compromise for both political parties with a great outcome for politicians but a huge loss for normal citizens like you and I.

The American Economy has many legs however 4 major support legs are actually on fire. The top of the economy is us. Taxpayers.

The first leg is the most obvious, Wall Street. I don't buy the whole concept put forth by pundits that Wall Street was innocently participating in a pyramid scheme that was bound to collapse. I read some of the mortgages that were percolating to my mailbox starting 5 years ago. They were shady, they continue to be shady and it was obvious to me than that the model wasn't sustainable. Financial companies could not keep issuing these mortgages without an eventual collapse.

I have the benefit of having worked with large financial companies for the last 13 years and I can absolutely tell you nothing happens by accident or without full knowledge and disclosure within the organizations.

Don't be fooled; attempting a quick fix for this problem won't fix our entire economy, it may not even fix this problem. The United States needs to define the problem first and consult some intelligent people before we solve it. There's no quick fix, no easy answer. $700 billion is a straight piss away of cash.

The second leg of the table that is burning is the cost of fuel. The Republican controlled government (plus Joe Lieberman) ushered in higher petrol costs and Americans are getting comfortable with the $3 to $4 prices. We were shocked into this. The problem is the doubling of petrol costs trickles into heating oil, natural gas. You name it. Cost of food, clothing, every consumer good essentially needs to rise to offset the cost of increased manufacturing and distribution cost. Oh yes, the cost of raw goods, like say, plastics also goes through the roof. $700 billion for Wall Street will have zero impact on the cost of gas.

By the way, the second burning leg gets more expensive as we delay looking for real alternatives to be used nationwide INSTEAD of gasoline. Drilling offshore is an expensive short term solution that won't solve our energy dependency needs. Nor does anyone want spent fuel from a reactor sitting in their backyard (oh ya, nuke power plants can get kind of messy and still take some time and money to build). This is a national security issue becaue our power grid is so critical and so is our national supply chain. Maybe we should be looking at some other alternatives like modernizing railroads.

The third leg on fire is the fleeing of jobs across borders. This might be obvious to some, especially those that have trained their replacements in another country. Welcome to maximin theory folks (maximizing profits and minimizing costs). When your job flees to South America, Eastern Europe or Asia, let me know if that business school training still makes so much sense and feels soooo good. I doubt it.

Jobs are critical at all levels of our society. They give people a sense of purpose and there is honor in labor well done. The revenue generated by people at work is key to our economic ecosystem. When our neighbor is out of work it hurts everyone. For every dollar your neighbor spends it keeps a couple of other people in the community employed and producing. Forget growth, we can't survive without a high employment rate.

The fourth leg that is almost burnt to a cinder is the war. Regardless of whether it was right or wrong, we can't afford it anymore. The government has gone from a substantial surplus to a substantial debt. To keep pursuing it fiscally is insane. Let me spell it out:

We don't have enough money to continue the war.

We just don't have it. And McCain is very wrong about cutting further into the government budget. As was said in the debates, if earmarks are $18 billion and represent government waste (which is not necessarily true by the way) and we assume another $5 billion to $10 billion can be cut, that still pales in comparison to the cost of the war. The war is nearing a $trillion$.

It doesn't take an accounting genius to see that we have a huge fiscal crisis at home and we're spending like crazy in multiple wars simulataneously. By the way, most war historians will tell you that opening multiple wars on different fronts is a "bad" idea. Historically, how many wars have been won that were fought with no allies on multiple fronts? Folks, as much as anything else; it's a resource issue. We don't have the resources to do this. And by the way, it also has the added benefit of being wrong.

We also have a nice fire under the tabletop of the US Economic Table. It's called health insurance. It's so important that it isn't really even a leg, it's part of our base in the economy. Without delivng too much into a discussion that is already well under way; our healthcare system is severely out of whack for everyone but the most wealthy. Healthcare is largely un-affordable for most Americans. No news there. But with the other 4 fires we have in our economy, how long will it be before people that get sick or need major medical help won't be able to pay? How long before the healthcare industry is looking at a major bailout?

Oh yes, and there is the nasty little turd someone left under our table that has come to be known as the auto industry. Years of willfull ignorance on the part of overpaid Detroit auto executives just took a dump under my burning table. It will take roughly $25 billion to get the stain out of my carpet along with the damage done to the table from the fire. And by the way, that $25 billion clean up bill comes with no guarantee whatsoever that jobs for Americans will get saved. Fancy that.

Ok, so we have a pretty large table with four of the main support legs on fire and smoldering at the base. Perhaps this isn't the time to do a quick fix? Maybe we want our government to step back and look at this, maybe do a quick study on the problem with some of the great minds we have in this country? Maybe we need a plan, not a fix.

I'd like to have as much of the fire out as possible before I put anything else on this table.

One thing is for certain, there aren't any easy answers and our table is still on fire.

Marc

I have some ideas about the economy....

Ok, so I've heard a substantial amount of criticism about the bail out plan. I'm actually tired of hearing all the bitching and political nonsense around this problem. It was inevitable, something anyone that could read recognized more than two years ago and needs some dynamic thinking to get fixed. So here are some ideas to get us on the mend:

What if we stopped spending hundreds of millions in Iraq this week by recalling our troops?

Why don't we cut the military's budget by at least 40% immediately and mandate that a certain % of the existing budget be focused on the veterans (has to be a whole number above 10%).

By the way, I think weapons and heavy military spending are a waste of cash and we seem to be out of it as is. Who are we kidding? The military needs to be a little smarter about how we spend our $$$. The war and our military spending reminds me of someone sitting with a max'ed out credit card buying stuff on HSN at 2 am in the morning. We can't afford anymore cheap cubic zirconia weapons of mass destruction yet we seem to keep buying them as the clock goes down and our interest rates go up.

Let's go on:

Why can't we convene a special investigators office out of the GAO and the Treasury to audit (yes, audit) the records and information from the top Wall Street offenders? At the end of the audit, we'd have a complete idea of what was spent, where and what is owed (and to whom).

Why are we in such a hurry for a quick fix? I've seen no proof that this problem can be fixed by spending our way out of it? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Why can't we, meaning our government, look at this a bit more like a long term infrastructure project:

1. Map out the problem. Do an audit of the system as well as of the offending companies.
2. Weed out the offending companies and put an immediate stop to bad trade practices.
3. Map out the business problems and come up with proposed ideas or solutions.
4. We have some of the brightest minds in the world, why can't we convene a panel from our top schools, top business leaders and ordinary people that stand nothing to gain from a multinational bank or financial institution?
5. Maybe we can ask some people that aren't total screw ups like the Swiss? Maybe there are people in this world that are doing things differently and looking at the same problems different ways.
6. We should set a real time frame to solve these issues. Let's face it, this is borne out of American's addiction to getting things without having the money to pay for them. So set a timeframe out for a fix and live with some pain and hassle for a while. Not everything is easy.
7. At the end of the project the American people should have an infrastructure to better support our finances and way of life. Kind of like our roads, sewer, water and power grid. They aren't perfect but they are vastly more predictable.
8. One more thing, we need to put in place laws and regulations that penalize people and companies that take advantage of our free market. Some of the millionaire motherfuckers that outright stole from the most needy in our society (such as senior citizens and those that can't help themselves living below the poverty level) need to get ass raped in prison, repeatedly.
9. How about we spend a minute or two looking back on history and considering past solutions to current problems. We seem to not give a shit about history in this country. We had this thing called "The Great Depression". Ponzi schemes and scumbag financiers put us there. How did we get out of it? We've had several crisis in this country before this one and I don't seem to remember anyone chucking $700 billion on the fire and hoping that everything gets better. That kind of reasoning hasn't worked so well for our country for the last 8 years.
   

Ok, anger aside, our representatives can no longer blow George Bush and his minions ad nauseam. Democrats, you can be replaced as well. This isn't rocket science here folks. Thousands of years of great thinkers and civilizations have risen and fallen before us. One thing to consider though: while we screw up the rest of the world is learning from our mistakes at lightspeed. While we march around with collective head up our nationalistic asses waving the flag and jabbering on about how America is free and the greatest country in the world, our enemies and allies alike are putting controls in place to keep the flailing, spastic Americans from tanking their economies again. If you think we look silly now wait until the rest of the world puts up its' collective nose at us and tells us to come back when we learn to be civilized.

I have some experience climbing out of holes and I can tell you it is much harder to climb out of a deep hole by yourself. And when you aren't a millionaire and you have a kitchen table full of unpayable bills, the world can feel pretty damn lonely.

Seems like right now we're acting like children minus parental supervision. We need to do better than this.

Marc

PS I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. Remember what Dave says: The borrower is a slave to the lender. We need to stop being borrowers to start a road to recovery.

Vote NO On The Bailout!

Click on the title of this post to send your protest of the latest plan to redistribute wealth upward to the rich:

Congress has no right to give the White House and its Secretary of the Treasury the power to transfer the people's money to the richest bankers in the country. Vote No to the Bailout legislation. The Bailout legislation is being rammed through Congress in a matter of days. This is an illegal power grab by the White House and their richest friends on Wall Street. The Legislation allows the Treasury Department to appoint the same bankers who created the crisis to administer and dictate the use of trillions of our tax dollars. It is also one of the biggest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in the history of the United States.
Congress should help families stay in their homes. Wealthy executives should be forced to disgorge their obscene profits, fees and bonuses that made them ultra-rich while they ran the economy into the ground.
I will be watching your votes on this and remembering your actions come election day.

James Kelly

Fiscal Republicans?

$85 Billion to fix AIG?

$620 Billion for Iraq?

$720 Million a day for war in the middle East?

$20 Billion for the auto companies?

Who's going to pay all these bills? Red States, come on, pony up some cash from all those cheap cigarettes and barbecue you eat!

Why am I on the hook for this?

For all of the bailouts:

Bear Stearns

AIG

The auto companies (approximately $20 billion)

I have seen absolutely nothing in writing to indicate the impact of losing these venerable institutions. I haven't seen the hard questions get asked:

Will giving these people huge sums of taxpayer dollars help anything or just prolong the problem?

Why did the CEO's of these companies still get to walk away with millions?

Look, when I go out to eat, at the end of the meal a waiter or waitress brings me a bill and I read it before I pay. Shit, that's just common sense folks. I can't tell you all how many times I've received the wrong bill! The point is, even when I don't have the time to really think about my spending, I still spend at least a couple of minutes reconciling my tab after friggin dinner!

So why do I have to let all of these experts, you know, the people that fought regulation (and still say government sucks) go ahead and write checks from my children's piggy bank? Aren't these the people that didn't ask the hard questions when every financial institution was racking up debt with no way to pay?

No, no, no. I have some questions before we continue this bailout. I have a distinct feeling that this isn't a bailout, it's a corporate handout. I haven't seen one single piece of legitimate justification from the GAO (General Accounting Office) detailing what kind of multiplier effect these so called bailouts have or will have. We have seen no justification from anyone anywhere.

And by the way, the government let Lehman Brothers die a painful death this week and they still owe $613 billion (yes, with a b). Who's coming up with that money? What is the impact on the government budget of writing these huge checks? How do I know the money will be spent appropriately? Lest we forget we seem to be trusting the people that just drove their own car into a wall!

By the way, everyone is asking how this massive meltdown could happen. I think it isn't as simple as pointing at a weak executive branch or a flacid congress. But I think asking questions of our congressman is a start. Maybe they should be pushing a little less cash at the Middle East and spending a little more time here at home watching the cookie jar.

By the way Mr. Congressman, who's going to bail the poor shlubs like me out? See, I have this problem, it's called "personal responsibility". I am responsible for what I do: if I drive too fast, I get a ticket. If I spend too much, I run out of money. If I don't work, I don't have money. If I borrow money, I'm supposed to pay it back. Maybe it's time to stop dodging hard questions and take responsibility for your actions.

Marc