Let me get this straight.
It's okay to bail out Wall Street.
It's not okay to bail out Main Street.
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This helps:
"I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives," Gibbs said during the daily briefing. "But the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their jobs, pay their bills to send their kids to school, and to hope that they don't get sick or somebody they care for gets sick that sends them into bankruptcy. I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader, then it was good for main street. I think the verdict is in on that." - Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary.
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Here's the deal:
We're the folks who do the right thing. We pay our taxes. We pay our mortgages. We work hard.
We are happy to help out others who are struggling and can't make do on their own.
We've already bailed out the big banks. And they thanked us by using our money to hand out multi-million dollar rewards to employees during a year of jaw-dropping financial losses.
And now we, the people who always can be relied upon to do the right thing, are ready to throw a tea party over helping out a few of our neighbors?
C'mon, people. We're better than this.
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I am listening to: The wind howling
I am reading: Attack of the Greed Zombies by Steinberg at the Sun-Times
And I am: Really tired of this crap
5 comments:
(Caveat... I didn't watch the video you linked to. I am only responding to what you wrote about it.)
Hedy. I wish it were that simple. But you have to admit, there is a huge problem in this country of people buying way more house than they can actually afford. And when there's a downturn in the market, the very little margin that they originally allowed themselves bites them in the ass.
Now, there are plenty of fingers to point around when assigning blame, but ultimately, those people who signed those mortgage papers saying that they would pay back X, when what they actually could afford was X-Y, are very much at fault.
Am I calling for a tea party? No. But as one who bought only as much house as he could actually afford (and consequently lives in a very modest house in a world of Barbie DFream Houses), I can't help but be a bit irked that I am paying the mortgage of some of those who did not do like I did. (And there I go again, holding others to the same standard I hold myself to. Shame on me.)
Keep in mind that I'm not into bailouts of any kind. I prefer a tough love approach. It's complicated, but it seems to me that the last few economic bailouts were simply a desperate attempt to prolong the illusion that our economy is okay. When it was anything but. Like an 800 billion dollar aspirin to cure the headache caused by the massive tumor in our collective cranium. And all that aspirin does is mask the symptoms long enough that we all forget about the underlying cause.
Yeah, I know. I'm a dick. I'm okay with that. Not that it matters. No one making the decisions on these matters is listening to me at all.
You're not a dick, Pos. But it really is that simple. There are people who fuck up and expect others to pay for it (our gov't, the banks, idiot borrowers) and then there's us: the others who ALWAYS pay for it. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's what we do and being angry about it is a waste of time.
Ah. I see your point more clearly now.
Luckily, I am able to multi-task while being angry, so I don't really waste much time and effort being angry about it.
I also tend to filter these types of stories outside my mental firewall, so I don't think much about them. But if you force me to focus energy and attention on the issue, I might allow myself a moment or two of frustration over the whole thing. Which is surely where my last comment came from.
Amen Pos.
Mom
Amen Pos.
Mom
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