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Showing posts from September, 2008

The Bailout

The bailout may help some of these firms, but the alternative is far more unpalatable. Without the bailout, a tightening of credit will kill all these nice little loans you need to buy cars and houses and hospital bills and that nice big tv you've had your eye on. Sure, we can be angry at the Wall Street entities that put us here, or at the McCain and his cronies in 2000 that passed the financial services deregulation bill that put us in this mess, but being angry at how we got here won't fix the problem. The problem this bailout attempts to fix is the derestriction of the purse strings of financial institutions strapped for cash. When liquid assets are particularly low (as they are now), nobody wants to lend. If you don't lend, the economy constricts, and slows down. When it does so at the rate it is now, people start losing jobs and when you lose jobs you lose everything else. When enough people lose jobs, there's a net drain on the economy and you're hoping enoug

"We The People... "

Thomas Jefferson wrote those words on the Declaration of Independence. He wished an end to tyrannical monarchical rule. He favored small government by the people and for the people. He found the first political party; the Republican Party. The original ideals of the Republican Party were certainly laudable. Smaller government involvement meant less interference and more freedom to be innovative and discover accelerators to profit. For much of America's history it was okay embrace it's ideals blindly. However, somewhere along the line the Republican Party lost its way. Somewhere along the line it stopped being a party for the people and started being a party of selfishness. Part of that is not it's own fault. Our society has changed. Since 1776 our nation has become a powerhouse, partially due to isolation and our ability to pick and choose our fights, partially because the elements of pecuniary progress have allowed it to happen, and partially because of the luck we had tha