Don’t Rush to Another Disaster!

“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urged Congress to quickly pass a $700 billion financial bailout, warning that letting problems persist would have dire consequences for the national economy.” “The White House warned of severe consequence if the bail out plan is not approved by Fri.”

Head lines of this sort are all over the place. What a night mare! Doesn’t this seem a Déjà Vu to you? 2003 Bush-Cheney administration used the fear factor to manipulate the American people and rushed the country into the Iraq war. And what happened to the country? Disaster! Now, they deploy the same trick again! This time they want $700Billions tax payer money expeditiously and with no string attached, to bail out the greedy and the irresponsible who had caused the turmoil. Hand them the money swiftly, otherwise, they warn, your life saving will be at risk. Outrageous!

Despite their pro Main Street rhetoric, they don’t care about the American people; they panicked because they worry about their own portfolios. They are very eager to hand the money to Wall Street but resist to hold the trouble makers accountable or even cap their compensation. They are not concerned with the risk Main Street is taking–they don’t know how the bail out will work but they insist it is the only option and imperative. Come on. What an insult to the American people!

The bail out plan penalizes the majority of Americans who are responsible by making them pay and reward the crooked handful that behaved bad and might have even committed crimes. It is an outright robbery using the fear factor as weapon.

I am not convinced the bail out is a good ideq at all. Bush-Cheney administration has long lost my trust since the Iraq war. Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson are losing mine. They ignored warnings and waited till it is too late. Now all they could come up with is this inferior bail out program.

$700Billions! Bejesus! That is more than 3 years’ cost of Iraq War. Check out this article to get a better idea how immense this money is: http://consumerist.com/5054163/what-else-can-700-billion-buy. Use this money to buy bad loan, and, they say, you’ll get the money back. Hello, these are bad loan?!?

This $700Billions does not include an $85 billion agreement on a bailout of the insurance giant American International Group, plus $29 billion in support that the government pledged in the marriage of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase. On top of all that, the Congressional Budget Office says the federal bailout of the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost $25 billion.

Add all those to the record high budget deficit of $400Billions that the Bush-Cheney administration created, the budget deficit will soar to a jaw dropping $1.1Trillion. It is not rocket science, any one with a personal budget to run knows this is not sustainable. Some experts had warned “Over the long run, growing budget deficits and the resulting increases in federal debt would lead to slower economic growth.” Why the obscene deficit and debt are not concerns? Because that is Bush-Cheney administration: Short sighted and selfish, the rest of us would have to clean up their mess.

There’s got to be a better option to ride out of this financial mess. Common sense might just be the best sense. Why not just let these bedeviling financial institutes fail? It is capital market’s doing, let the market correct itself. The bail out will not stop the housing market bubble that already started to pop. Instead of buying the bad loans/assets off these troubled banks, how about using the $700Billions as loans to banks so they would loan money out and the money market won’t be ‘frozen up’, the claimed danger, or to make it possible for the home owners to pay their mortgages so they won’t become bad loans?

I hope American people, the congress and the senate learned a good lesson from the Iraq war, stand strong, explore other alternatives, do not hand Bush-Cheney administration whatever they want, do not rush into another disaster. There had been enough damage done to the country already. I call the elected officials to seize this opportunity, do the right thing and finally lead the country back to the right track.

I emailed my congress woman, state senators and Nancy Pelosi’s office. You can too.