$700,000,000,000

It's been about a week since the news of George Bush's proposed government buy out of a large sum of failed mortgage securities currently in the hands of the now defunct Lehman Brothers and AIG banking and insurance firms, and it's time PooB took a stance on this issue, so without further adieu, I will present our avid readers with my take on this exceedingly grave issue.

Let's start with the basics. Lehman Brothers (a mortgage bank) and AIG (an insurance and investment firm) recently went belly up due to the failure of their most significant investments: sub-prime mortgages. Now for those who are unaware, a sub-prime mortgages are home loans made to people who have less than perfect credit or less than enough income to actually merit a loan in the amount of a house. Most firms make these loans aware of the fact that at least 2% of the mortgages will default, so they charge astronomical variable intrest rates to make up for this fact. Well with an economy going bad due to high oil prices, low wages, rising food costs, and a steadily declining dollar many more than 2% of these loans defaulted, and the banks were unable to make them back because the houses that end up in the banks' control lost their value. Long story short, banks took huge risks with these loans. With huge risks there are huge chances for gains, and equally huge chances of loss, unfortunately for us and them, the latter was the result.

Now here's where my opinion begins. As "socialist" as I tend to be on matters like healthcare, education, and government involvement in the economy by way of energy regulation I am opposed to this buy out because it destroys free market capitalism. The basic tenet of which is, as I said above, big risks lead to either big pay offs or big losses. If we buy out these failed banks, it means that capitalism no longer has the aspect of huge loss and effectively encourages banks and other large companies to make horrendously foolish investments because they would no longer be a risk for losing, just gaining or breaking even. This buy out sends the message that you can invest in whatever you want, however you want, and if you mess up the government, and the tax payers will just assume your losses so you can get on with your life. Quite possibly the most burdensome, and detrimental act a government could impose on it's people. It's one thing to tax people to send people to school or take care of them when they get sick, but to save a handful of companies and their CEOs with tax dollars without much of a benefit to anyone but those being saved is offensive and should be illegal.

Speaking of the CEOs, when this buy out is passed (I do not want it to be, but I know it will) it MUST include pay caps for these "business men." This is America, the land of oppurtunity, not the land of oppurtunism. In this country, you work hard and you get ahead, you work smart and you get a raise. These CEOs clearly made bad choices that have harmed the American people, the American economy, and their companies, how do they possibly merit multi-million dollar incomes? They don't, and I have no problem with the government telling these people that if they want the taxpayers to bail them out they need to contribute by having there salaries slashed, permanently.

Finally, the most outrageous aspect of this buy out is the price tag, seven hundred BILLION dollars. Think about that number for a minute, there are about 7 Billion people in this world, so to pay for this, EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD would have to contribute one hundred dollars. Well, we can't tax the world to make up for our mess ups, so let's go just look at America. If we divide the check for this "Rescue Plan" amongst every single one of the over 300 Million Americans it would mean $2,333.33 per person. Do you have that much extra money? I sure don't, and I'm sure 90% of the people you know don't have that much money, and those that do would not be willing to use it to donate to save a few stupid Wall Street Execs. Our government has no where near enough money for this disaster, and we should NOT be spending it. We will be borrowing the money from the likes of China and Europe and even further devauling the dollar. We are already in a era of deficit spending thanks to the grossly incompetant leadership of the current administration and the wars and "national security" programs it has begotten. We simply cannot afford this. The only possible recourse would be if the Fed used the money to buy stock which will one day turn a profit for the tax payers instead of simply buying the bad stuff which will never profit.

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