The Trillion Dollar Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
By Uppity Woman on September 24, 2008 at 10:58 PM in ACORN, Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Economy, Federal Lobbyists, Homeland Security, Hoodwinking, Joe Biden, John McCain
I was cruising the internets for a simple way to explain what Paulson and our irresponsible congress are thinking about doing. First of all, it certainly appears that congress created this problem by allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac run wild guaranteeing loans to people with Zero credit ratings, no means to pay for a home, and certainly no means to maintain a home.
I was just listening to Barack Obama, who has essentially been silent for a week when it comes to details, repeat John McCain’s idea to have a bipartisan oversight committee to watch over the man who thinks he should get a trillion dollar blank check: Mr. Paulson.
At the same time, I was listening to Obama talk about “opening up credit” again. What does this mean? Does this mean that ACORN can start getting mortgages for dead beats again instead of being shut down as they should be? His idea is to repeat the very same mistake again!
What does this trillion dollars of taxpayer money all mean? What are we buying? According to Paulson, we are buying up “Toxic” debt that is “clogging up the arteries” of our economy.
Now I ask you, would you buy up a deadbeat’s mortgage and expect to be paid? Anybody? Would you buy somebody’s bankrupt local company and take on the owner’s debt? Would you not think this was crazy? And if nobody else wants to buy these bankrupt companies’ debts, are they a good deal? Of course not.
If they were a good deal, other companies would be bidding on them.
What are we getting for this trillion dollars?
Well we don’t really know.
What is what we are buying actually worth?
Well we don’t know that either.
What will be a future benefit for our purchases?
Well we don’t know.
Is this a good idea? Well we don’t really know that either. We just know that what we are investing a trillion dollars in something “toxic”. That’s all we know. Oh, we know one more thing too. “It” might work or “it” might not. How will we even know if “it” “works” if we don’t even know what would constitute success? Do we have a benchmark or two? Nope. We don’t have that either.
What we do have is one man, whom nobody ever elected, saying that we have to do this by friday or the sky will fall. Give me a trillion dollars to hand out like Santa Claus or you are all going to be sorry. I don’t know if you will STILL be sorry after you give it to me, but Just. Do. It.
How stupid is that? This is what you get when you put people who have never even run a lemonade stand in charge of a country. This is the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party folks!
Every one of my senses is insulted by what is going on here.
My business sense tells me that we are about to be shafted by very stupid politicians who are beholding to greedy rich lobbyists representing companies that couldn’t care less about any one of us.
My common sense also tells me we are also being shafted by greedy deadbeat individuals who want things that are privileges under Democracy handed to them as rights under Socialism.
What is the government going to do with all these bad mortgages they are about to buy? Foreclose? I doubt that, don’t you? I think instead they will give these people their homes for pennies on the dollar, at the expense of people who have responsibly paid their own mortgages for years. What about all the people who figured out that owning a home means you repair your own home when something goes wrong, that there is no landlord–and they can’t handle this and don’t even WANT to refinance? What is our government going to do with all these abandoned homes in need of repair?
What reward will responsible Americans get for this deal? I can’t think of anything. Can you?
Maybe we should all, everybody in America, stop paying our mortgages. Then we can all get our homes practically for free? Ya think?
So what else am I hearing? I’m hearing that some in congress want to add auto loans and charge card balances to the mix as well. And student loans. I don’t care whose idea this is or what party you are in while you serve in congress. If you support this, You suck. If you support this and you are a Republican, you SUCK! If you support this and you are a Democrat, you SUCK! I smell lobbyists stuffing your pockets, you pigs. You are going to make sure these creditors get their money from everyone else’s pocket and everybody who is at fault, be they individuals or corporations, walk away scott free!
Charge Card Joe! Where do YOU stand in this? You and MBNA, the big honcho of your state of Delaware that has lined your pockets for decades. You gave us “bankruptcy reform” that forces people who are dying of cancer and who had to file bankruptcy because of medical bills, to recognize that after they are dead, their home will go to creditors and their famiies can just punt. How come you aren’t worrying about that??? These are people who deserve help, people who were responsible until a catastrophe hit their lives, not the kind of people who acquired mortgages they knew they could never pay for. That trillion dollars would go a lonnnnng way to reduce the cost of health insurance in America. That trillion would go a lonnnng way to repair our decaying infrastructure AND provide jobs while doing it.
Barack! How come you voted No to a cap on credit card interest? you said you voted No because the cap was too high. So no cap is better than a high cap? And how are you doing with your buddies ACORN?????? You started out with these criminals in Chicago (of course!). They and your Finance Chair, the Mother of The Mortgage Meltdown, Penny Pritkzer got loans for people with absolutely NO ability to buy a home. And here they are today, working hard for you to illegally register as many people as possible to vote for you. The states can hardly keep up with their crimes. You and your friends have been playing footsie with Fannie and Freddie and now you have the audacity to say now that “We have to act fast”?
What the Hell is going on here? Nevermind. We already know.
Ok maybe I am off base here, I’m just a shmuck next to these honcho big shots in DC running our lives. But it seems to me that if you want the stock market to do better, you CUT the capital gains tax to ZERO instead of doubling it.! You set interest rates at 4.5% and LEAVE IT THERE. You Regulate the IRRESPONSIBLE, not the RESPONSIBLE. Why on earth would anybody bother to save money or invest a little in the market if they have to take all the risk but give all the benefits to stupid politicians so they can hand the money out to somebody else??? I don’t get it.
Ok, I digressed. But it’s my blog so I can do that, right? Back to the rest of congress.
Those of you who pay off your charge cards, those of you who reliably pay your auto loans and mortgages, those of you who rent while you save your own money to buy a home, and those of you who bust your butts to pay off your school loans, will this benefit you? Nope. The middle class is about to get screwed again. This time it’s BIG TIME. That’s the message. There is no other message here. By the time Congress is done porking up this bill for the lobbyists, the American Dollar won’t be worth squat. And guess who cares? Those of us who aren’t benefiting from this bailout, that’s who. Why? Because we are going to have to pay for it and still pay our own bills with our devalued dollar.
If you worked hard and responsibly paid your bills up until now, you will get NOTHING. If you are a deadbeat, this is your Day. If you are a greedy corporation, this is your Day. But the rest of you can just go punt. You get to pay for the whole goddamned thing. Socialism for corporations. And socialism for debt defaulters. Nothing for you. In short, you are sucker punched. You are being punished for the sacrifices you made. You are being punished for living within your own means. And you are being punished for saving against your own future. Both sides of congress are punishing you. In America, the middle class is shit. It always was shit. And right now, you are on the bottom of the congressional shoe and they are wiping you off. Right after they empty your wallets. If for some reason, you busted your butt to reach a piece of the American Dream through your own hard work and ingenuity, you are also screwed. You will pay for this. You will pay for doing it right.
I think it’s interesting how corporations want Capitalism when things are going well, and they want Socialism when things aren’t going so well. When was the last time a corporation offered their share their profits with Americans? Now they want us to share in their debt. I think it’s even more interesting that congress thinks this is Ok.
I think it’s just as interesting that our congress thinks the people who behave responsibly toward their creditors are worth nothing, and people who are not responsible should have their debts absorbed by the rest of us who ARE responsible.
I think America has lost its way, hijacked by extremists at the fringe of two parties. This is what lack of moderation and extremism-gone-wild does. Good habits are now officially bad habits. And bad habits are now officially rewardable.
And Capitalism has just been removed from our country. Blogger Pundita was right. Say hello to the New Democratic Socialist Republic of the United States, Comrades. It’s the Pie thing Michelle was talking about, folks. You work. You save. Then you Share with those who haven’t done either of those things. People left other countries to come here so that they could get away from that.
According to Rasmussen, Sept 23, Only 28% of Americans approve of this trillion dollar idea.
I could do hours on this, as you can tell. But my scouring of the internet did yield the simple explanation of what is really going on here.
Paulson’s Toxic Toxic Debt Plan
So, Treasury and the Fed (i.e., you and I) are going to buy toxic mortgage securities.
1) If these were priced fairly relative to their intrinsic value, an actual investor would have bought them. So we are forced to conclude that the government is going to overpay for them, regardless of the price they actually end up paying for them.
2) What is the immediate benefit? That investment bankers who make $2 or $3 million a year don’t lose their jobs? Boo freakin’ hoo.
3) If the government ends up owning all these mortgages, are they going to foreclose? No. They’ll let folks keep their houses for pennies on the dollar. “American dream” and all that bull—-, you know. Houses worth 2x or 3x what mine is, which I paid for all on my own.
4) How are they going to deal with all this debt? They’ll monetize it, of course. Severely depleting my savings, to the benefit of those who didn’t save squat.
Thanks again, Washington. I hate you all.
Copyright 2008 Uppity Woman. All Rights Reserved.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
