McCain blames Obama. Moveon.org blames McCain. They are both wrong. So, lets either blame Pedobear or lets get it straight, there is plenty of blame to go around — and, to a large extent, the people losing their homes are to blame as well. See Who Caused the Economic Crisis?
So, what’s the real answer? I boil it down to this — WE caused it. WE bought overpriced houses. WE didn’t punch our realtor in the mouth when she tried to up-sell us, WE didn’t break a stapler across our mortgage broker’s jaw when he tried to get us to try his interest-only loans. Yeah, yeah, we can point at the big boys all we want, but when it comes down to it, your friends and neighbors crawled under that box and grabbed for their “I can’t believe its a mortgage” deal. If fiscal Pedobear is raping you now, quit blaming the politicians. Bush didn’t do this. Barney Frank didn’t do this. Morons did this.
And now, the bailout. Congratulations, congress. You screwed us harder than Pedobear ever could imagine.
First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.
Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.
But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.
Three weeks after becoming law, and with the first dollar of the $700 billion yet to go out, officials are just beginning to talk about helping a few strapped homeowners keep the foreclosure wolf from the door.
As the crisis worsens, the government’s reaction keeps changing. Lawmakers in both parties are starting to gripe that the bailout is turning out to be far different from what the Bush administration sold to Congress.
Well, go figure. The Bush administration lied to Congress. I, for one, am getting a little sick of Congress passing legislation and then saying that Bush hornswaggled them. They knew it was a lie when they voted for the Iraq war – and they either didn’t care or they were simply too afraid to take the political hit. Now, with this asinine bailout, they went and did it again.
