Today the $700 billion dollar bailout of the financial industry was passed by Congress to be signed by President Bush. So was it a good idea? After researching the subject I believe so. When I first heard that President Bush proposed this bill I thought he foolish for making this suggestion. I thought this would be the biggest mistake of his presidency. George Bush is a Republican, and his few supporters are mostly Republicans. What is one of the basic principles installed in Republican ideology? Less government involvement. This went against everything that those Republicans believed about how the government should be run. At the time I personally didn’t think we should do it.
Then I began to notice something. My stocks were losing (mostly, haha) and gaining in large amounts, and by large amounts I mean 15%-20% everyday (The bulk of my stocks are in the financial industry). The market became very volatile. Then banks started closing and declaring bankruptcy, foreclosures sky-rocketed, and frankly our economy was heading for a MAJOR recession. So what was the country going to do? After looking at all options it appears that passing this bailout was in fact the best option. Here were the three most plausible situations to fixing the economic crisis;
The first option was for the government to do nothing. This fits the Republican ideology, let the economy fix itself. As news got worse, I realized that should the government do nothing it would probably end in a very long, very deep recession that would spell disaster for our country.
The second option was to give the money to the people. This fits the democratic ideology, and was also not the right answer. A medical analogy of this type of bailout would be like treating the symptoms not the disease. The financial industry would collapse leading to a very long very deep recession (a pattern seems to be emerging).
The third and final possible option was to bailout the financial industry. Democratic Ideology proposed by George Bush (go figure, I believe that is an oxymoron). As much as I don’t like this, it is the lesser of the evils. The government has control, which is bad, but it stabilizes the financial industry. It leaves the fundamentals of the economy strong. Due to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown a recession is inevitable, but with the fundamentals strong it would be shorter and lighter. Plus, if the government plays it’s cards right they could make 3-4% of $700 billion dollars (you do the math).
The reason I wrote this article was to try and reassure you, the American people that this bailout of the financial industry was in the best interests of our country. To be honest I really don’t want to support the financial bailout but unfortunately it is our best option. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “the lesser of the evils.” Only time will tell whether the financial bailout was the proper course of action, but as of now I think we are going in the right direction.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Palin vs. Biden: Results
Tonight was the Vice Presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden. If you were not lucky enough to watch the debate, all I can say is you missed out BIG TIME. This was, in my humble opinion, the debate of the year. With the big “is Sarah Palin qualified?” buildup to the debate, with drama building in the republican wing of the government, Palin showed why McCain chose her to be Vice President. She seemingly had an answer to every jab.
When Biden suggested we needed Obama to bring the parties together, she brought up 96% of Obama’s votes were along party lines. When saying Obama would cut wasteful spending, Palin countered that as President Obama would add $2 trillion in government spending (mostly on government programs). When Biden mentioned McCain voted for big oil, Palin pointed out that his running mate also voted for them. When Biden said they would pull out troops in 16 months, the retort was that a McCain administration would listen to the commanders themselves on when to pull out. Back and forth the two went during the whole time. To the people who have been drilling Sarah Palin with practice questions in preparation for the debate for the past couple days/weeks, job well done.
Neither made as big of a blunder as Barack’s “line by line” comment in his debate, and both made very few gaffes which would come back to bite them. The one gaffe that really struck me as rude was while Palin was speaking Biden sighed really loud into his microphone. Look Joe, I understand you don’t like her but you still have to respect her. Palin just seemed so personable throughout the debate compared to Biden’s stoic self. This is something that I think most people will look at to help aide their decision (whether it should be or not) on who to vote for. The Palin of the RNC came to play and left the Katie Couric interview far in the past. It will be interesting to see how the debate affects the polls. All I can say though is game, set, match to the Governor of Alaska.
P.S. my favorite line of the debate-"say it aint so Joe" LOL
When Biden suggested we needed Obama to bring the parties together, she brought up 96% of Obama’s votes were along party lines. When saying Obama would cut wasteful spending, Palin countered that as President Obama would add $2 trillion in government spending (mostly on government programs). When Biden mentioned McCain voted for big oil, Palin pointed out that his running mate also voted for them. When Biden said they would pull out troops in 16 months, the retort was that a McCain administration would listen to the commanders themselves on when to pull out. Back and forth the two went during the whole time. To the people who have been drilling Sarah Palin with practice questions in preparation for the debate for the past couple days/weeks, job well done.
Neither made as big of a blunder as Barack’s “line by line” comment in his debate, and both made very few gaffes which would come back to bite them. The one gaffe that really struck me as rude was while Palin was speaking Biden sighed really loud into his microphone. Look Joe, I understand you don’t like her but you still have to respect her. Palin just seemed so personable throughout the debate compared to Biden’s stoic self. This is something that I think most people will look at to help aide their decision (whether it should be or not) on who to vote for. The Palin of the RNC came to play and left the Katie Couric interview far in the past. It will be interesting to see how the debate affects the polls. All I can say though is game, set, match to the Governor of Alaska.
P.S. my favorite line of the debate-"say it aint so Joe" LOL
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Obama's One Major Gaffe
During the first presidential debate Obama did a good job not letting McCain roll over him, however he made one major gaffe which really scared me, and brought up an issue which every American citizen regardless of political party, race, class, or anything else should know about. Obama made the statement that if elected president he would go “line by line” to cut unnecessary spending, like the example which keeps getting floated around of testing the DNA of bears (was it a paternal or criminal case, it was funnier the first time). There is only one problem; he is not allowed to do that. The president is not allowed to cut out parts of a bill, he has to approve it all or none. This is the one major reason America has a $2 trillion budget deficit. To explain what happens in our political system I’m going to give an example;
Let’s say someone proposes a bill to make children’s healthcare more affordable for the poor for let’s say $28 million. Everyone agrees that is great and should be done. Then a senator decides to cash in a favor that one of the other senators who worked on the bill owed him. He’s up for election and the highways in his state need some work. So he asks his friend to add on a line at the end that gives $8 million to his state for road construction. Another Senator decides to turn in a favor after that. He wants to halt global warming and scientists in his state want to study the effects of cow farts on the atmosphere (this really was studied). It will only cost $2 million, so it’s added on. This keeps happening and some of the most insane things are passed under the ruse of important items. What happens if the president vetoes the bill because of the crazy things added on? Well, the news reports that the president doesn’t care about poor children, and the veto goes down in the records.
It has been proposed that something called a “line item veto” be put into place, it is a veto that allows the president to metaphorically take a pen and cross out the highway construction, DNA tests of bears, and cow fart studies and just pass the children’s healthcare part. Now I know what you’re saying. Why wasn’t this put in place before? Guess who the only people who can put this into affect (alright if this isn’t irony I don’t know what is) The Senate and the House. So needless to say it probably never will be passed, but I encourage you to let everyone know about this, and perhaps maybe one day the will of the people can one day drown out the greed of politicians.
Let’s say someone proposes a bill to make children’s healthcare more affordable for the poor for let’s say $28 million. Everyone agrees that is great and should be done. Then a senator decides to cash in a favor that one of the other senators who worked on the bill owed him. He’s up for election and the highways in his state need some work. So he asks his friend to add on a line at the end that gives $8 million to his state for road construction. Another Senator decides to turn in a favor after that. He wants to halt global warming and scientists in his state want to study the effects of cow farts on the atmosphere (this really was studied). It will only cost $2 million, so it’s added on. This keeps happening and some of the most insane things are passed under the ruse of important items. What happens if the president vetoes the bill because of the crazy things added on? Well, the news reports that the president doesn’t care about poor children, and the veto goes down in the records.
It has been proposed that something called a “line item veto” be put into place, it is a veto that allows the president to metaphorically take a pen and cross out the highway construction, DNA tests of bears, and cow fart studies and just pass the children’s healthcare part. Now I know what you’re saying. Why wasn’t this put in place before? Guess who the only people who can put this into affect (alright if this isn’t irony I don’t know what is) The Senate and the House. So needless to say it probably never will be passed, but I encourage you to let everyone know about this, and perhaps maybe one day the will of the people can one day drown out the greed of politicians.
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