Bailouts, Bailouts, Bailouts

Fannie and Freddie. AIG. Financial Institutions and Wallstreet. AIG - again. Now the big three Auto Manufacturers.

People feared Obama would take us toward socialism. Bush not only ushered it in, his economic policies and his pet wars made it absolutely necessary (they say).

The Bailouts are the government "buying stock" in the companies, thereby becoming shareholders - or part owners of - each company. We now have government owned banks and insurance agencies.

People are asking, "Why?"

Well, for that, read Bailout pays Bonuses and Sugar Daddy and End the Bailouts and America Discovers.

I like to blame Bush for this economic crisis because of the policies of his administration, his decietful war and admittidly the fact that he sounds like an idiot when speaking. Here I will admit, there is a much broader blame to be placed.

I am not sure whether it's placement should be on the exectutives and boards of these companies or on the greed of human nature. Greed(1)(2)(3). I realize that Greed bears the fault of this crisis. However, the executives of these companies have gorged themselves on greed. The fables behind the links (1) and (2) are fine and good, but now we have another, more true fable to tell of greed. How the few greedy executives paid, praised and rewarded themselves to death.

They preyed on the people they were serving until the people they were serving no longer had money. The government tried to bail out the companies - and the executives did not use the money to re-invigorate the economy, no - they used it to reward themselves more, buy more companies and go on company-paid vacations. How much responsibility should rest squarely on the shoulders of these greed-filled people? Now, it seems, these executives and CEOs are not satisfied with eating themselevs out of food (draining our economy), they are gorging themselves on the public assistance and not using it to re-plant the fields. So, basically, the farmers are spoiling their fields and the fields of their neighbors who tried to help out as well. When does it end? When will these greedy people be held responsible for what they have wrought upon this country?

Are we going to face a "French Revolution" - complete with freedom fries? What is it going to take to get rid of this Greed-over-common-sense ideal in our financial markets? I would not mind at all if they were only hurting themselves, but they are hurting me and millions of other people with their endless, thoughtless greed. CEO pay is 15 times the average salary. For any idiot who thinks all of our money is not just going UP without any "trickle down" at all, WAKE UP!

I couldn't say it any better than S. Woods Bennett, a 57-year-old lawyer in Baltimore when he said, "Their sense of entitlement is appalling.''

There is not any situation that any one person 'deserves' a $125 Million Dollar bonus. None. If a company makes that kind of money off of people, it needs to cut back what it charges people. Not by a lot, but by some. Spread the money around a bit more - raise salaries for the next year, increase employee benefits. Cut the executive's bonus back to 1 or 2 million. It is just a bonus. Spread the other $123 Million around by giving bonuses to all employees who all helped contribute to the success. Give a Bonus to your customers who are soley responsible for the company's profit - make one full payment on their loan you hold for them.

One of the most, in my mind, idiotic practices of the Financial system is to charge people who have less money available higher interest. The less money you have, the more money they force you to pay for something. The 'system' calls this practice 'mitigating risk,' but in fact they are pretty much ensuring the defaults of those loans. In what kind of 'logic' does it make sense to make people who have less pay more?

The bottom line is that the Financial companies created their own misery by their culture of greed. They have devoured and deprived their customer base.

People have funny ideas that a financial analyst is a very smart individual and most people think of a simple farmer as, well, simple. Looking at the way the Financial complanies have run their business, I have to say that even a farmer knows to fertalize their fields to continue to reap a harvest. Farmers also rotate crops between ones like corn that deplete the soil and ones that are easy on the soil like wheat. They also plant cover crops after harvest, like winter rye or buckwheat and till those back into the soil before planting season. The Farmers know that you have to treat your "Soil" good to make sure that it will provide for you when harvest time comes. The Financial companies don't seem to grasp the concept.