The Great American Bailout Fiasco
Consider Common Sense and the rest of America are currently witnessing the greatest financial fiasco of all times. At first glance, it looks like the world has gone insane and is nearing its final days. And it appears to hit every country on this planet, even those who enjoy the current economic woes of the United States are hurting due to falling oil prizes. In a matter of six months, the price of oil has dropped from $147/barrel to approximately $40/barrel and for an outsider, this is truly bewildering. Six months ago, the self-appointed “experts” were projecting oil to cost $200/barrel at about this time and yet, once again, they were wrong! As a matter of fact, they were not only badly wrong, they were almost criminally wrong. Just imagine, airlines and other companies depending so heavily on the consumption of oil were happy to pay upwards of $90/barrel for oil as a fixed price for several years into the future and in a matter of a few months, they are paying twice as much as the going rate on the open market.
So much for those experts, we are in true awe of the political “experts” called United States congressional members, both in the House and the Senate. For them, doling out money is for these mental midgets like playing Monopoly with the minor difference that they are dealing in billions of dollars and not just their own money or ‘funny money’ but real money, taxpayers money! What we have witnessed in the past three months is so obscene, one has to wonder if they have not gone over the cliff or their brains having totally dried up and are therefore no longer working rationally.
Without delving into the string of events of the past months starting with the housing crisis followed by the credit crisis, the banking crisis, the crisis on Wall Street and in the insurance industry, we are now in full bail-out crisis mode. The country is in a recession and this is resulting in major layoffs across the whole spectrum of corporations and even States. They are all closing in very fast on their respective ‘Bankruptcy Days’ and they are showing up in Washington D.C. asking Congress for immediate help in terms of loans and outright financial rescue and Congress is only too happy, it seems, to help out with money nobody has. They are doing what they have been doing for decades, they are indebting the future of America. And the sad thing is, they are proud of themselves for doing the right thing. This can all be summed up in one sentence: While the individual citizen is tightening his/her belt and is pinching pennies, Congress is doling out billions of dollars! Again, not their own money, oh, no, this is money the American citizen has not even earned yet and will never get to spend because Congress is doing it for them ahead of time. Disgraceful and nearly criminal are not strong enough words to describe this situation where we find ourselves.
To paint a clearer picture, we will try to illustrate this in real numbers: One billion is a number that has a One (1) in front of Nine (9) zeros. In more real terms, if a person is making annually $100,000, he would have to work for ten thousand (10,000) years to earn one billion dollars. Even with an annual income of one million dollars, he would have to work one thousand years to earn that kind of money. Another interesting factoid is to measure the lengths of the earth’s circumference by stringing up one dollar bills wherein two dollars would equate to one foot in length. One billion dollars would nearly be enough to span the globe at the equator four times.
And our government in Washington is just spending it as if there is no tomorrow. There can be no question as to their prime motivator: Bailing out companies means higher employment resulting in happy voters the next time around. It does not matter that future generations are being burdened with a national debt that is outrageous. Currently, the national debt stands at $10,660,730,000,000. That is ten trillion, six hundred sixty billion, seven hundred thirty million dollars. Taking the current population of the United States at 306,000,000 (three hundred six million), this amounts to a personal indebtedness of about $34,840,000 for every person in America. If it were not so sad, it could be funny. Every baby born in this country starts life with a debt of $35,000, is it any wonder that most babies cry at birth?
But hold on, Congress is not finished yet. Since the seven hundred billion dollar bailout in early October, additional emergency bailouts have taken place (AIG Insurance Company) and they are rescuing the American carmakers in Detroit. Several States are on the brink of insolvency and are begging Washington for money, the Democrats are working on a major stimulus package to help the economy and President-elect Barack Obama has his people still working on additional rescue/stimulus deals. In total the numbers are so overwhelming, some “experts”, a.k.a. numbers crunchers are now saying that in all we could easily be adding seven trillion dollars worth of debt in the near future. That would bring the total national debt to 18 trillion dollars which in essence would burden every living soul in the country with about $60,000.
The only remaining question is now: Will we, the citizenry accept this silently or will there be a serious attempt to let our elected officials to stop this madness? As a whole, the American people are known as being generous but this is going too far in our humble opinion. Should we not hold them accountable for their actions? One way would be to never ever vote for them again. That would send a clear message to politicians: “We want you to represent us in Washington, not indebt us!” President Ronald Reagan had it right when he said: Government is not the solution, Government is the problem!
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