Sunday, September 28, 2008

“Bail-out? Naw, naw, I’m more of the crash landing type.”

So don’t tell nobody, but I don’t think we’re entering a depression.

First a disclaimer, there are a lot of folks who know more about finances and politics than me; however, I do keep up with the news and study items that interest me. Again, I’m a working guy with two youngsters, a house, yard and laundry…so this is in truly layman terms and understanding.

Wall Street is a lot like my cat.

If I feed my cat too much, she will eat until she throws up because she’s a dumb ass and when the food is in front of her that’s all she thinks about. Once she throws up she’s fine. But there’s less drama and mess to clean up if I regulate the amount I let her eat.

Wall Street is filled with dumb-ass greedy ass-holes. Anyway, if allowed, they will greed themselves right out of business. Without regulation, each individual just looks at his piece of the pie and no one looks at the whole picture.

So you have two choices, regulate the market or let it correct itself. And by correct itself, I mean let it puke its guts out and get rid of all the shit that can’t be digested.

It’s too late for regulation, so now we just have to let it suffer. I’ll try to examine how it will affect us if the government doesn’t dump money into the system. I could be wrong because I’m not an economist, but it sounds like the government is trying to stop a tooth from falling out with masking tape…I just don’t think it will work.

Besides if Bush supports it, it must be bad. When has he made a good decision? Instead of a tax plan that puts money into working America, he pads the pockets of CEO’s, and when draining the middle-class starts to hurt the economy, he spends more money with an economic stimulus, which basically is like giving double tax breaks, one for big corporations and one for the middle class.

It’s paying double for the same result because money in tax breaks to large corporations is money down the drain. Do you know why? Because money doesn’t flow downhill, shit flows downhill.

And that’s what the bail out is…shit flowing downhill into the pockets of the middle class and as a result we’ll have record deficits that will be very hard to correct. If we shove a bunch of antacids in the kitty’s mouth, it’s just gonna make her throw up worse.

I hate to say it because I liked Regan, but trickle-down economics hasn’t worked since the last century. It just doesn’t work anymore. As I understand it, that economic philosophy worked during the industrial revolution and after the last depression. I’m afraid Republicans will have to move to a more comprehensive economic philosophy that supports upstart business, but doesn’t blindly dump money into huge corporate entities that in turn spend that money overseas.

Anyway back to Wall Street.

This is the market that supports business that is sending jobs overseas to make a cheap buck. I say let them fail. Banks will go out of business and people will loose money. But if money is federally insured aren’t we guaranteed to not loose our cash? If that’s true, then I don’t think we have to worry too much about loosing our saving. Investments yes, savings and checking accounts, I don’t think so. So don’t we need to conserve some of the government’s cash to back up those federally insured banks?

Next, the lack of loaning power of banks to small businesses: I believe this will only be temporary. Once the big corporations fold, there won’t be any one else to invest into.

My guess, and this is just a guess, that after the transition, Wall Street mortgage companies that move money around that doesn’t represent a tangible product will fold and we’ll be left with a Wall Street will transform into two entities, one that invests overseas and one that invests in America.

We’re not at a fork in the road at all. The fork was deciding whether we should or should not regulate our market and that decision was made years ago. We’re currently on a bumpy road and I’m afraid changing the tires half way through won’t make much of a difference.

COMING NEXT…I’ve been getting plenty of sleep, but the interesting dreams have ended…why?