BAILOUT: Yes or No?

[Don Corleone]

I'm just wondering if in 3-4 pages of unflinching confrontation, CR & Koga ever considered the possibility that they're BOTH right. That Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac WERE incentivizing people to make loans to people that might not be the most secure risk, but that loan officers were off on a tear and doing well more than anything being asked of them by FM/FM?

Seriously, guys, take it down a notch. Take the 10,000 foot view for a second:

-You have Democrats arguing that in order to save the economy, we must subsidize Wall Street's bad investments. Privatized profits, socialized losses. Does that sound like a Populist stance to any of you?

-At the same time, I would argue, in an even greater departure from their avowed principles, you have Republicans arguing that the only way our credit markets can be resolved is to socialize them. Hmmm....

Similarly, the bill didn't pass for 2 reasons: 1) too many House Republicans dug their heels in and showed some spine (65%) 2) some Democrats showed commitment to their prinicples too, and voted against redistributing wealth upwards (I'd peg that at about 25%).

And yes, I think to a limited degree, Nancy Pelosi getting up and saying "By voting for this bill, you wisely and publicly agree that Republican fiscal policies are a failed joke" was about 10% responsible. That was one of the dumbest political stunts I've ever seen. Or was it? I wonder if she didn't speak to her true feelings and try to sabotage the bill while simultaneously voting for it.

By the way, while we're all patting ourselves on the back and talking about how the responsible taxpayer is going to get shafted by the irresponsible fatcats, how about a little bit of sobering reality for all of us?

-We have a 9.6 trillion national debt.
- The average American taxpayer holds over $12K in unsecured debt (credit cards, educational loans, car loans).
-Over 70% of the government's money comes from the top 10% of wage earners.
-About 40% comes from the top 1%.
-When people talk about "giving" $2300 to each American, that's exactly what it is. Pure redistribution of wealth. The bottom 50% pay less than 3% of their income in taxes.

Seriously folks, let's get real. For all our "soak the rich" talk, we already are. And we're not talking about paying this bill ourselves. We're talking about screwing our kids. We've over consumed the wealth our current 2 generations can produce, and we're now eating into our kid's future earnings. I'm not going to pay for this bailout, Jillian and Allison will, and they're 3 years and 6 mos, respectively!

Any plan that restores us to fiscal conservatism, balanced budgets and $0 debt is good in my book. Which is why I'm thrilled to death that the bailout bill went down, even though it personally cost me about 20% of my retirement savings. And if Koga wants to give me and the other evil Republicans credit for it, I'll at least proudly take my 65% of that credit.

Seriously folks, we should go to Frankfort and study how successful markets are run. While we've been busy playing world cop, the Germans have quietly and successfully transformed themselves into the largest exporter as a percentage of GDP (greater than China!). That used to be what we did.