What's wrong with doing nothing?

The Assosiated Press : WASHINGTON - After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, winning lopsided passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House, where Republicans opposition softened.

Well, this is a rare occurrence indeed. After incorrectly predicting congressional passage of the bailout, the Senate comes through for me and does the wrong thing. Loading the bailout with pork up the wazoo, it passes with a landslide of bipartisan approval. Interesting to note that it includes corporate tax breaks. The credit markets are frozen because of the lack of liquidity and they're going to reduce the amount of tax revenue collected by the very entity that is bailing them out. Yeah, that makes sense.

Has anybody else noticed that the sky hasn't fallen? Mothers aren't eating their babies. Dogs and cats aren't sleeping together. Could this whole "crisis" be just a bit of an exaggeration?

Okay, I'll play along. Just for the sake of argument let's say that a we are on the precipice of another depression. It's been what, about 80 years since the last one? During that time I would say that we have become "soft and spoiled" as a nation. From the 1980's until now we have gone on a spending spree like never before. What used to be considered "living above ones means" is nowadays considered, "par for the course."

This bailout reminds me of the people who max out their credit cards , can't afford the monthly minimum payment and open a new credit card to pay for the ones they already owe on. How about letting the financial institutions work their own way out of their mess? If the credit market seizes up for awhile, so be it. Let everybody tighten their belts a little instead of extending credit we don't have. The dollar will strengthen if we don't print billions more of them with no assets to back the paper.

Our Grandparents muddled through without new cars, sub woofers, 120 channels on satellite or cable, a TV in every room, a cell phone for every person over the age of 12, Netflix, taning beds, nail salons, etc etc. I'm just as guilty of the excesses as anybody else but, I realize that they are just that. Excesses! When I was young and my parents wanted a station wagon or a new house, they had to scrimp and save for the down payment. When I wanted a new G.I. Joe and it wasn't my birthday or Christmas, I had to sock away my allowance for months until I could afford one. What's wrong with having to save up to buy something you want?

The age of instant gratification has not only devolved our ability to sacrifice for the things we want but it has also isolated us as a community. In the thirties when no one had a pot to piss in nor a window from which to throw it out, neighbors knew each other. There was a sense of community. People felt like we were all in this together. I'm afraid that over the past thirty years we as a society have grown more and more reclusive and unsociable. We don't have the time to spend in the front yard watching kids play. Hell, most of us won't let our kids play in the front yard anymore, because we're watching TV and don't want to take the time to supervise. The Neighborhood Watch volunteers used to be the retired couple living down the street who sat on their front porch. Whenever Billy got out of line or wandered too far down the street. you'd hear, "Billy Johnson! Do you want me to call your mother?!"
Porches have been replaced with hedges and shrubery. Homes aren't even designed with a large window facing the street anymore.

Once again, I must confess: No one is less sociable than myself and if this new world of getting to know those in our community comes to fruition . . . I'm going to have a real tuff time.

It seems that ever since the "Me" decade of the '80's we Americans have lost our collective minds. Somehow we shut out or ignored the common sense of our" greatest generation" , cranked up the stereo and boogied our selves into living on credit. A lot of us want to make excuses that we can't get by paying up front for stuff because "the man" has changed the rules. It takes 2 incomes now to support a family and things cost so much more than they used to.
Well, yes it's true that the cost of living is higher today than yesterday and it will be even higher tomorrow. Unless you're an executive making a damn good living you can not afford a family on a single income. However, this does not excuse the excesses that we have accepted as necessities. Far too many people living in apartments because they can not afford a home are driving expensive cars, have several televisions, and all have cell phones. It's priorities. Pure and simple . . . it's priorities.

Again, I'm very pissed off that this bailout is going through. Yes I know there are protections for the home buyers and we're supposed to get most if not all of it back but, what if there is no "crisis"? What if this has all been a scheme? I'm supposed to believe that this just snuck up on all these Ivy league graduates? C'mon! We all could cinch up the belts and get by with a little less, save that money for a good old fashioned down payment. Let's try that approach instead of printing money we don't have.

DaG Out