Bail out idea for responsible people
 

Ok, so it looks like this $700 billion bail out will happen. People who bought houses over their means will be given aide while those of us who pay like idiots are getting nothing except perhaps the piece of mind that the whole economic system won't collapse around us.

Bush mentioned that tax payers might see an upside to the bail out as some of the money will be going to shore up under priced assets that might appreciate in value at some point in the future. Rather than give EVERYONE a tax credit at the point, why not limit it to those of us who were responsible while telling those who were bailed out that they already got their credit in the form of loan assistance.

Only problem would be how to manage that. I have very little sympathy for home owners who got in over their heads and now I have to pay for them in one way or another.

Not sure what forum this should go into, but it's not really political.

+1.

Why didn't I have the foresight to buy a $800,000 home that I couldn't afford, then cry like a baby, have the banks cry like babies, and have the government bail us all out!!

Ya know what? I say all those folks (bankers included) who benefit from the bailout should be given the opportunity to repay their debt to society - yeah, I'm talking something along the lines of prison work programs. Go paint some lines on the highway, pick up litter, help little old ladies cross the street. It may not put more $$ in MY wallet, but at least then these folks won't have any free time to screw up the economy again!

-Z

LOL! I love it, Z! :D

Debtor's Prisons. I say we bring 'em back.

yea..mee too..i want a mc mansion i can't afford...

I haven't seen anything in this bailout (yet) that includes homeowners.

Rick is right. Not one penny will help any actual taxpayer or homeowner. This is your tax dollars used to protect corporate profits.

+1 :d

All we're going to see is a bunch of congressmen and senators leaving their old government jobs for their new jobs at the "bailed out" corporations. The last big cash grab before the end of the good 'ol USA.

I never said the end effect of the bailout won't help homeowners. It's just not going to bail them out directly. Keeping the credit markets going is going to help a lot of homeowners. But if you don't see it that way, you surely understand how letting the credit markets collapse will severely sting homeowners. If no one can get a loan to buy your house from you, your value will sink like a rock and your equity position will suck badly.

well who is to say that they don't just take the $$ and just not lend out again...cause that is what they will do..I predict 10% interest by june..if not much higher

The gov't. is not just writing a check to cover losses. They're buying huge amounts of stock, which gives control to the gov't. I predict another RTC to run all this until it becomes break-even or profitable to unload it.

rtc?

I question whether a company with the government as its majority shareholder will really be motivated to put up good profits and be competitive in the sense that a freely-held, publicly traded company would.

The government is historically very slow to react to things - probably more so than shareholders with their own money on the line. Much easier to "slide stuff by", engage in less-than-frugal expenditure practices, etc.

I bet the guys at these companies being bailed out can't wait to have the government be their primary shareholders - they're gonna' party like it's 1999.

RTC is Resolution Trust Corp. There will certainly have to be an oversight body of all this. RTC was it during the S&L bailout.

I say screw giving the asses 700 billion to bailout the economy, with 700 billion every ctizen would get $325,000 that would fix the economy quicker than bailling out the bastards that got us here in the first place.

$700B/300M = $2,333.00 per citizen, assuming all 300M are "citizens". :)

$90 trillion would allow each of 300M folks to get $300k, FWIW.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

On one hand, I understand what you mean in terms of the ramifications for the entire financial market, and the "big picture." At the same time, housing (at least in areas like where I live, Los Angeles) has been prohibitively expensive. As in, average salaries can't really support the costs of ownership of average homes. Is the bailout going to prop up housing values such that we continue to have unaffordable housing? Is that a good thing?

We've all been following the's Case-Schiller graphs. Will the bailout stop the regression to the mean (inflation), or just slow the inevitable slide of housing prices as they eventually go back down to that lowly (but financially appropriate) level?

Another way of looking at it

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230704116773989.html

Hey, don't let math get in the way of a good chain email. I got it today too.