Curious George

Most people will tell you that you should help Wall Street because, if you don't, you're likely to suffer the consequences. There seem to be two options:

1. Let the banks, businesses and everyday buyers who got themselves into this mess and should've known better in the first place dig themselves out of this mess on their own. They made their bed, now let them lay in it. That sounds reasonable. However, a problem like the one they're facing is like a contagious disease. It may not effect you now, but if left untreated, it's very likely to effect you in the near future.

If you allow Wall St. to take it's lumps, you're likely to find it very much more difficult in the future to get a car loan, a house loan, a school loan, a personal loan, a credit card loan, a business loan, or any other kind of loan. You may also find yourself out of work since your business, and others like it, will find it harder to get loans to expand and continue operations, to may payroll, to make it through a bad economy, etc. In short, you may find yourself out of work with no prospects and no ability to get a loan because the money just won't be there, it'll be tied up in the bad loans of the past.

This type of scenario is very dangerous. We could find it lasts for only a year or we could find it lasts for over a decade, and the longer it lasts, the worse the financial environment gets for everyone.

2. You organize some sort of government bailout. Whether it's an insurance program, like the House Republicans want, or a buyout, like the Administration wants and the Democrats appear to be supporting. Doing this ties up a significant amount of taxpayer funds for an underdetermined amount of time, possibly leading to a massive loss (or profit) on that investment depending on the chosen plan and the terms of that plan.

Result? Things more or less carry on as normal, crisis averted, but now instead of all that bad debt gumming up the works of our financial industry, it's now gumming up the works of our government (making it harder for us to spend it on lovely new programs or wars or tax cuts) and increasing the size of our national debt (at least in the near term).

I'm opposed to option 2 on principle, but I'm also young and I have no family to look after. I can weather a credit crunch or a depression (if it gets that bad) and live to tell the story. Some people might not have the stomach for that though, and others may have families and other interests to look after, so I don't necessarily fault them for choosing option 2.

Alternatively, a socialist might also answer your question by saying that you should help because you can. It's the nice thing to do. And you should always be nice. You greedy, self-centered... meaniehead.

Cephus

The problem has been that there's very little regulation in the financial sector, which has led to a lot of abuses and financial games and it's put us into a crisis. Simply throwing money at the companies responsible for the crisis isn't going to solve the problem and the last thing we need is to reward the people ultimately responsible by allowing them to have their golden parachutes and get away scot free. Personally, I'm in favor of letting these massive banking institutions go under and having government assistance in buying up the assets, either by other companies or through nationalizing them and then strictly regulating the entire industry again. The idea that we need to just throw a trillion dollars at the problem, a trillion dollars we don't have to spend, is idiotic.

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dirtpoorchris

I say let the state handle it.

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America. God is wearing black.

Cephus

But the "state" is us. We're just mortgaging our future and the future of our children with more than $10 trillion in debt that someone is going to have to pay back sooner or later. Anything the "state" handles comes right out of our pockets.

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dirtpoorchris

No. What I was trying to convey was. Let the bad money find a home and dont bail out anything. And let each state decide how its going to handle its banking laws.

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America. God is wearing black.

Southern Belle

This is just part of the economic cycle. It is getting too high and now it's time for a depression so prices can crash and it can stabalize. I hope no one thought that there would never be any depression ever again because that's not smart.

Americans got way too spoiled and splurged with money they didn't have. Nescessities should always come before luxuries and you should always watch your finances carefully and spend money responsibly. The average person didn't do this, and neither did the big banks, and so EVERYBODY had a hand in crashing the market. Instead of breathing CPR into a corpse we should all take responsibility and let the market reset itself. Sure the people at the top will suffer the most but that's why you shouldn't count on money to solve all your problems. Everybody has worth no matter how much money they have. I hope there are no more suicides like there were in the last Depression in the next one.

Cephus

Except it's not a state problem, it's a federal problem, especially when most of these companies that want to be bailed out are federal or multi-national corporations. The states have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

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Cephus

Of course, but that's exactly what the Bush administration wants us to go back to. We've lived way beyond our means, spent more than we could possibly afford, bought all the luxuries on cheap and easy credit that most people should never have had and now that the crows have come home to roost, people are freaking out and wanting the government to bail them out.

Screw them.

Sorry, you dug your own grave, you deserve to lie in it. I have zero sympathy for homeowners who bought homes they couldn't afford, didn't read and understand the paperwork, especially for those who falsified their income to qualify for a larger home than they could afford. I have no sympathy for people who had to have new cars every other year, who had to have a big screen in every room of the house when they were only making minimum wage, who thought the money would never end. It's done. They were idiots. They need a good solid smack in the head.

__________________
I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-hypocrisy.

Blog me! http://BitchSpot.JadeDragonOnline.com

Jessica

I'm real skeptical of a President who says that we must go to war in a sovereign nation because they have weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attack, a threat to our national security, etc etc and then to find out none of it is true, and that if we do not go to war, it is dangerous for us not to, and a threat to our national security and blah blah blah and bad things will happen.

Now he says the same thing about the bailout - we must do so or bad things will happen.

I wish someone would give me 700 billion dollars.

Southern Belle

However you or I feel about Bush, his admin ends in a month. It's not his fault, it's a mix of everything that's gone on.

But I completely agree with what you said above. I do feel for them, because they were so consumed in material wealth, and they probably didn't know better, and they probably will really suffer, but maybe they will learn to be more responsible. We can hope at least. ^^