Thursday, September 25, 2008

Bailing out a hole, forget the boat.

*The "flawed" financial plan proposed by the President, the $700 billion bail-out...no, let's put it this way...

The $700,000,000,000 plan to bail out the economy. To staunch the hemorrhaging of Wall Street. To save us from a long and disastrous recession. A situation that didn't happen yesterday, or last week, or last month. This has been y-e-a-r-s in the making, and NOW it's an issue of major crisis?

"'October Surprise', much?", I thought as I tired to fall asleep with Anderson Cooper last night. Since that wasn't happening, I turned off Cooper, fired up the boat anchor and googled the blogosphere.

Seems I'm not the only one who's blogging about the timing. Most had valid points, though there were a few tin foil hat bloggers tossing out their two cents. The same folks who believe that the Hadron Collector when fully operational will create a Stargate...

I'm not suggesting that this is the type of surprise that had been whispered about where Bush would find a way to suspend the elections and inciting Martial Law here in the States by creating a reason to escalate the war in Iraq (or when the Stargate opens).

"We are in the mists of a serious financial crisis", he announced solemnly and somewhat fearfully, as if it just appeared, like headlights in front of a startled deer (Bush did have that look to him last night, if you saw the news conference). More accurate of a statement would have been, "We have been in the mists of a financial crisis for way too long."

The writing on the walls of all the foreclosed homes have been here for some time now. For years now, I would drive around what used to be cornfields and see McMansions and mega-plexes pop up as quickly as mushrooms after a summer storm. I would ask myself, "Who are these houses for? Is there a mass exodus to the mid section of my state that I don't know about? Are there plans for large factories or businesses to come to this area? Will there be actual jobs?"

No, it was all for speculation, hence the term "spec-homes" or "spec-buildings". That worked in the movie, "Field of Dreams". If you build it, they will come, and all that. This isn't Hollywood, though. But to give the masses a prod, out comes the "adjustable rate loan".

Why did so many people believe that "adjustable" could only go in one direction?

The "American Dream" is shoved in our faces every day, like lipo-sucked and tummy-tucked bodies in magazines...and they are still air-brushed before making the pages. A roof over one's head has become a five bedroom, 2 and a half bath home for a family of four. Soccer-mom transportation went from Ford mini-vans to Cadillac Escalades. It seems that somewhere down the road, nothing was considered out of reach...the question stopped being, "How much is it?", to, "How low can I get the payments?"

Oh, and now you can have your lipo and your tummy tuck on a credit plan, too.

When did money lose it's tangibillity? Where will $700 billion come from? Which pocket will be dug in this time, since $530 billion has been taken from one pocket already due to the Iraq/Afghanistan war? Whatever pocket it is, it's all from the same pair of pants. And guess who's wearing those pants?




*I tend to rant when I blog about subjects not well versed, ie, I don't know a hill of beans about, so excuse me. Politics being one, and economics being the other, so maybe I shouldn't blog about these issues. But if someone can announce that slamming two particles together will open up a stargate, it's all game.

2 comments:

  1. Great rant! Eloquent, too. You should consider becoming a pundit.

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  2. I should question, based on the state of pundacity today, whether or not that's a compliment...but, coming from you, I know it is. Thanks.

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