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Story Archives: Bailout from hell


Bailout from hell
posted Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 @ 3:09 pmE-mail Story E-mail Story | Print Story Print Story 
A $700-billion bailout Congress is considering for some of Wall Street's biggest and most successful firms—historically—smacks of an effort to nationalize the U.S. financial sector.

That's the least we can say of a plan some Democrats in Congress favor as the world economy teeters on the brink of disaster amid an era of terrible decision-making in the mortgage lending arena.

While we recognize it is unconscionable to contemplate the fallout from Wall Street absorbing billions of dollars in losses thanks to scores of Americans who failed to pay their mortgages, we do not believe it is the U.S. taxpayers' responsibility to pay for bad decisions a host of financiers made as they chased the almighty dollar bill. Bluntly put, financiers rolled the dice by gobbling up home loans, which banks made to people who had no business borrowing the money in the first place, or who did not have the means to pay back the loans at all.

Though we realize Congress most likely will approve a financial package for Wall Street—especially since 2008 is an election year—we are alarmed that there exist support for Congressman Barney Frank's proposal that the U.S. government to take a stake, or ownership, in companies, which, heretofore, plodded along in a free enterprise economy, good or bad. Worse, Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, wants to cap executive salaries. That reminds us Communist Russia circa 1950.

But allow us to be perfectly clear on a couple of points.

It is not being suggested the Congress of the United States hand over some $700 billion of the people's money to Wall Street with no strings attached, or void of any regulatory oversight. Besides, who is to say $700 billion is an adequate amount of money to bail out Wall Street of the mess it finds itself today?

Instead, Wall Street should get its own house in order, void of a government subsidy and void of the government taking more control of another facet in society, which has managed to work through good and bad times for years. In other words, let the chips fall where they may.

If Wall Street is dumb enough to accept Congress' help, it deserves the oversight Congress most certainly will demand in exchange for throwing the people's money at a problem greed created.
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