We don’t need no water

September 25, 2008 by lestro

by lestro

I’m just not buying it.

Sorry, but I am not buying that the only way to “save the economy” is with a $700 billion bailout package that has to be passed NOW! NOW! NOW!

Admittedly, I am not an economist. But there has to be a better way to right the ship than charging every American taxpayer $5000 to make sure George Bush’s Trust Fund buddies get their golden parachutes.

According to the 2007 IRS FactBook, there were 138,894,000 income taxes filed last year. $700 billion divided by 138 million actually equals $5039.81 per taxpayer. $700 billion divided by estimated US population of 305 million equals $2295.08 per every single person in the country.

Over the past two days I have been watching Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke do their best to frighten Congress into passing a bailout package before anyone has a chance to see what’s in it.

Watching some of their “The Sky is Falling” testimony made me think of the run-up to the Iraq war, only this time, the “mushroom cloud” has been replaced with the ridiculous notion that our entire economic system will collapse in on itself.

Paulson and Bernanke’s sweaty brows and bulging eyes as they sit in the hot lights before Congress bear more than a passing resemblance to all those equally bug-eyed administration mouthpieces who told us over and over that not only did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction, he was getting ready to use them against us.

Even the President’s address the other night was reminiscent of when he went on the air in 2003 to explain to the American people why we had to invade Iraq.

This is an administration that has not only tried to use FEAR! to scare the Congress into giving away our rights, but also has led us into a war on false pretenses. Now, they are using the same tactics to try and get Congress to pass a $700 billion bailout package that most everyone, except the Bush administration, seems to think is fatally flawed.

It’s despicable, but I wish I could say it is surprising.

Just look at this quote yesterday from Johnny Mac:

The meeting with Mr. Bush on Thursday was precipitated by a call from Mr. McCain, who cast his request as a matter of urgent national priority. “Following Sept. 11, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis,” he told a small group of reporters, while reading the brief statement from a teleprompter, in a small ballroom at the New York Hilton Hotel. “We must show that kind of patriotism now.”

Sayfuckingwhat? Did he just use 9/11 to try and scare us into passing this horrible bailout package? You fucking scumbag.

Something does not add up. Maybe the reason John McCain needs to suspend his campaign is because his millionaire wife and their buddies are finally losing money so NOW it’s time to do something about the economy.

(And by the way, why is it so fucking important that John McCain, a guy who has admitted he does not know shit about the economy, so goddamn important to the process that he has to suspend the democratic process for a few days and rush back to Washington to be in on the negotiations?)

One can’t help but wonder if the Administration That Cries Wolf is once again trying to sneak something past the American people. Forgive me if I can’t help but think all the big noise they’re making is because they know this is their last chance to bilk the taxpayer and make their buddies rich and they are afraid if they don’t scare us into thinking that we don’t even have time to read the bailout package we might realize they are just the same bunch of lying screwheads they always were.

This is an administration that has proven over and over that they don’t know shit from shinola and will tell any tall tale they can to help their rich buddies get even richer at the expense of the rest of us. Not only that, but these are the same idiots whose reckless policy and rigid adherence to a failed and flawed ideology that got us into this mess.

I just can’t bring myself to believe that these five failing banks will cause the end of capitalism. These are people who invested poorly and got caught holding the bag when the music stopped, as Craig Ferguson (of all fucking people) put it last night.

They gambled and they lost and now they don’t want to pay up. In fact, they still want to keep their $45 million salaries and retirement packages for the great job they did running these companies into the ground.

No. They need someone to bash them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and say “Bad screwhead fuckwads! No!” When I gamble and lose or I run up a credit card bill that is too much for me to pay, I don’t get a government bailout, but these rich fucking idiots want $5,000 from every taxpayer? Screw them. I want them tossed out on their asses and forced to stand in breadlines for the welfare checks that this bailout really is.

They have been making things up and betting against themselves, using money they don’t have in order to make it look like they are profitable. They have been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years, using one credit card to pay off another and the collection agencies have finally caught up with them.

I say good. Let the fuckers drown.

The American economy will survive. I have enough faith in the American people to believe that we can get through this. Not every industry is failing.

Yes, credit may be tougher to come by for a while, but you know what? GOOD! It’s been too easy for too long for people with no conceivable way to pay back debt to get credit card after credit card and mortgage after mortgage, making these Ponzi Scheme motherfuckers on Wall Street very rich in the process.

It’s time for people – and Wall Street and the fucking government – to start living within their means again. Republicans may call Democrats “Tax and Spenders” but the fact is that Republicans are simply Spenders and it’s time once again to let the grown-ups take over and start paying the bills.

These banks loaned money to people who were living above their means and could not possibly pay it back, yet the loaned them the cash anyway. That’s called poor business practice and – like the good free-market Republicans they are supposed to be – it’s time to pay the piper and let the market correct itself.

But that’s only the right thing to do when it happens to the little people, I guess.

Allowing the market to correct itself doesn’t sound like all that bad an idea:

It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent. But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing. Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government. That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

Imagine, holding people responsible for their poor decisions.

Wow. It boggles the mind.