I am at bottom of the financial food chain pinching pennies while scratching my thinning pate. It certainly looks like socialism to me, no matter how unseemly my assumption seems.
Without voter assent, the federal government is spending my tax money to rescue banks and investors long on greed and short on foresight billions and billions and billions of dollars. That deserves and exclamation point, I exclaim: “Billions and billions and billions of dollars! Holy sh—, that’s a lot of smackers!”
President Bush tells us it is necessary to save our gaunt economy. Well, duh!I have never written a hot check, taken a loan I couldn’t repay or maxed-out my credit cards, but I’m paying the darn tax piper just the same.
I’m just a poor working stiff. There is no golden parachute hanging in my closet, and no federal programs to buy me even a papier-mache parachute. My bail-out bucks are stashed in a modest savings account.
These days it’s pretty hard to pad my cash stash because I’m spending all my discretionary bread on grub.
I’m in the lap of luxury when I sup though. Soup, TV dinners and SpaghettiOs — Uh-Oh!
I know it wasn’t just overly avaricious financiers. Some Americans were over-extending their credit or swallowing hook, line and sinker, loan deals that they should have questioned right from the git-go.
The bailout kicked up the national debt to 11.3 trillion. That is a boat-load of zeros.
How long will it take the bourgeois to pay off a marker of that magnitude? I’ll be sporting a halo, plucking a harp or typing a story at that big newspaper in the sky long before that puppy will be paid off.
Two guys are jostling for the most powerful office in the land, perhaps the world.
Is it really, or are they just a couple of politicos jockeying for an egg-shaped office with a view? Are big businesses and powerful lobbyists that are throwing their weight around Washington, D.C. the true puppet masters? Whatever.
Come January it will probably be more of the same only with a pricier price tag and a new guy dissing the opposing party. The government will throw money at the problem, but won’t address it. Money is the problem, sure. But you can bet your sweet 1040-EZ that lack of government oversight is the essence of the dilemma.
Somebody needs to keep an eye on the wheeler-dealers that are playing fast and loose with our financial future.
"Somebody needs to keep an eye on the wheeler-dealers that are playing fast and loose with our financial future."
ReplyDeleteWell, that didn't happen. Now we have the choices of (1) Socialism, (2) Degenerating into the status of a banana republic because the nation's entire corporate and financial infrastructure will need to be sold to foreign interests, or, (3) Enduring a repeat of the Great Depression, with no forseeable end.
I vote for temporary socialism. The history of our nation's response to the last major economic upheaval--The Great Depression--shows socialism is a temporary necessity so capitalism can survive. The Depression-era work projects--the WPA and the CCC--had no private sector takers. Ronald Regan's "trickle-down" theory would have been a disasterous substitute for these programs. Likewise, the major infrastructure program of that time--the Tennessee Valley Authority did not attract the interest of the private sector until several years after its establishment.
It's a good time to reconsider voting for anyone who supports continuing the laissez faire regulatory policies that got us into this mess!!
2 words...Free Clinic. It's so nice to hear that my high hospital and clinic bills with my high insurance costs helps pay for someone who can go to the free clinic. I can't...I have a job! I pay out of my pocket monthly just so I can pay later.
ReplyDeleteNow don't give me the "Oh but what about this person..." deal. That is not the majority.