In light of the recent bailout brouhaha, here’s two posts from the past that are highly relevant still. The first is a post featured on this blog, Prose of a Pol, and is a satirical look at how to obtain universal healthcare for everyone in the USA based on how the banks were bailed out. Check out Five Steps to Socialized Healthcare for a quick look at how we could obtain healthcare for everyone. Make sure you check out the comments on that post for a great non-satirical discussion on the pros and cons of universal healthcare and how to improve our existing system. Oh, and if you can spare a stumble please do so!
The second post comes from one of my other blogs, My Last Name Means Money. The crux of Trickle Up Economics Beats Bank Bailouts is that bailouts beget bailouts and we see that today, with the first bailout causing no noticeable improvement to the economy, a second even bigger bailout bill is now working its ways through our political offices. The Republicans are right that these bailouts represent a slippery slope, however it is not the size of the bailout but merely that we’re bailing out failing enterprises and once we began to do so we removed a huge disincentive to fail. Now that failing can be profitable, will we continue seeing more and more large corporations reporting dire economic situations and accepting government bailout loans? Call me crazy, but I believe we should give out loans only when we reasonably expect to be repaid, not when the recipients are literally falling towards bankruptcy.
Check out these two posts and if there’s enough positive response I may post my updated thoughts on the latest round of bailout bills. Take care everyone!
lol..nice posts. I just found your site on someone’s blog. Very interesting. Enjoyed reading them. :thumbs up:
r_shahins last blog post..Why do you need an About me page
Some interesting ideas there, certainly make you think! The financial crisis is so complex though that it’s difficult to know where to begin when trying to learn about it.
Sarahs last blog post..3 Stone Engagement Rings Guide
Both article are right on. I’ll be honest I’m a little worried about this whole bail out. I’ve got a funny filling it’s just satisfying a bunch of pork pushers.
well I’d say w/o the bailout, things would have been worse now, although I’m guessing about 1/2 of that $350 billion was wasted by Paulson overpaying to avoid the idea of nationalization, which it appears we’re heading towards right now anyways.
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It is complex Sarah, but only because all the interested parties make it so. If we could classify this crisis as simple then we would not need so many experts to tell us what to do! Hence, whenever you see anyone experts giving their opinion on the crisis, keep in mind that if they told us to remain calm and just wait things out these experts would be out of jobs!
I agree Adam, lend money when we know it’s gonna come back into tax payer pockets.
I am am not at all confident about this bailout. The word bailout is scary enough.
Isn’t that what you do just before your plane crashes? Bailout!
Thought I’d throw a little humour into a gloomy situation.
Tony Lees last blog post..GARMIN ZUMO 550 MOTORCYCLE GPS RECEIVER
“Call me crazy, but I believe we should give out loans only when we reasonably expect to be repaid, not when the recipients are literally falling towards bankruptcy.”
I couldn’t agree more with the above statement. I can’t beleive our government wants to spend so much money on such a rediculous concept. Also, this makes me like the big banks even less!
Actually jc, if we did absolutely nothing it is my sincere belief that we would be much better off and closer to recovery. Sure, a lot more companies would have gone bankrupt, but they should have gone bankrupt! By stepping in and bailing out failing companies we in essence rewarded poor performance, punished those who performed well and encouraged everyone to try less knowing that if they fail they’ll get bailed out. Just as you said, half the money was likely wasted, so if we did nothing we’d still have all that money and we wouldn’t be in immensely more debt. The irony here is that this economic crisis revolves around loose credit, and we’re using credit to fix the problem! It’s literally like trying to fight fire with fire!
Great point Tony! I’ll have to use that in future arguments. I like to use the analogy that the economy is like a boat and we’ve now discovered that this boat has holes in it. However, we can see the shore and could swim for it, or we could try to dump the water out of the boat and hope it makes it to shore. We’ve chosen to bail out the boat, but if we just said screw it and let the boat drown we could have already swam to shore!
Couple of good posts. Health care is funny we pay more than any country in the world and are low in how good the care is. Bailouts they only did because if no money is loaned the whole economy in the US would stop we based it all on credit.
You’re right, if the credit valve was closed our economy would literally halt. BUT, that doesn’t mean that pumping more credit will help, it’ll only serve to help us stumble forward.