This Financial Mess Is All Ours

[davidbcoe]

I'll start with a caveat:  I don't know anything about economics.  My understanding of the current mess in the financial markets is rudimentary at best.

Okay.  That said, I've been going back and forth all day with a Republican friend of mine about who's to blame for the failure of the bailout/rescue bill and what Obama should have done and what

Comments

[elisel]

I think this may be the fairest assessment of the bailout plan (and its assorted can of worms) that I've read. Thank you! I have a conservative family and a lot of liberal friends (I fall out somewhere uncomfortably in the middle with apparently irreconcilable opinions that fall in both camps) and I've heard a lot of blame thrown around, and not much responsibility taken.

Bad debt lies at the root of this entire nightmare, and we are the kings and queens of bad debt.

We seem to have become a nation of debt. It's our habit to buy, buy, buy, beyond the means we have available to us: Not just on a personal level, but institutionally. The media and the government encourage us to do so, tacitly or openly. I think it's a terrible philosophy.

I don't like the idea of a bailout bill because I agree with the people who think that it seems we're rewarding big companies (for exploiting our foolishness or gullibility?) and cushioning CEO retirement plans. But I think a lot of the people who are dead-set against the bill fail to realize how much the economic crisis at the top is affecting ALL of us.

I don't have a good understanding of economics, either, but I think we need this bill. And the nature of compromise is that to get the things we want or need, sometimes we have to stomach things that aren't appealing to us.

[davidbcoe]

Thank you, Elisel. It's hard for me to separate out the politics from all of this -- this was a difficult post to write -- because I feel so passionately about the upcoming election. But we seem to be on the brink of something truly cataclysmic here, and I for one would like to avoid it if we can.