Monday, September 22, 2008

Bailout in haste--repent at your grandhildren's leisure.

I've been a little troubled by the proposed bailout.

Here's a story that tells a little about it.

My problem is one of competing concerns.

On the one hand, I think the government should help stabilize the market because the volatility we have currently is nothing but trouble for jobs, business, and growth.

On the other hand, I worry that the changes in the law over the past few decades have created a situation where well-financed, and well-connected interests with access to information unavailable to the rest of us, have created a mess where a few profit while the rest of us to pay the tab.

As it stands now, my generation and succeeding ones will pay for the preceding generations inability to delay gratification. The "Me" generation is so stunningly self-centered. Why should my generation (Gen X) be forced into parenting the Boomer's excesses?

We have financed increases in wealth for a small number through policies that a few trickle-down ideologues have convinced people are in the country's best interests.

This is absurd. Trickle-down is only a euphemism for Marie Antoinette's line of "Let them eat cake."

This bailout represents emergency CPR for a few companies and industries that have profited from the rest of us. Now, when they get caught without a chair in the economic game of musical chairs, they scream for help, despite the free market ideology they've trumpeted for years.

The failure of the administration to properly plan is not cause to hand over a blank check to cover their incompetent asses for their ideological idiocy. The public apparently feels the same way.

We should all have serious concerns about an administration that waits too late to fix a problem, then tries to use the immediacy of the need created by their dilatory response to demand change without oversight. This smells of Hitler demanding emergency powers from the German Parliament to fix a fabricated crisis and then seizing power.

Congress is doing the right thing by slowing down the train.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really like reading all of this stuff. You make some good points, and I can understand it all... the latter isnt always so easy to find. Thanks for making things a little clearer, I have to pass your blog onto other people.