Posted on 09/30/2008 4:02:44 AM PDT by suspects
Despite the vote by the House of Representatives yesterday, the fact remains that America desperately needs a bailout - a massive rescue plan for an institution vital to our nation and its economy.
My bailout target?
Personal responsibility.
America is experiencing a collapse of the ethics market. Belief in the notion that people should be responsible for their own actions, or pay their own bills or keep their promises has plummeted. It’s time to pump moral and ethical capital into the idea of individual responsibility.
Is it any wonder that Wall Street is waiting for a bailout? After all, we’ve become a bailout society.
Earlier this summer - before the financial meltdown - we passed Barney Frank’s $300 billion bailout of individual homeowners who had bought homes they couldn’t afford. Last week, Congress voted a $25 billion bailout of the auto industry because they’ve made cars nobody wants to drive.
And now we’re bailing out banks because they made loans to people who feel no duty to repay them. This failure of personal responsibility has led to the potential failure of our financial markets.
Yes, there is a public policy aspect to this story. The Clinton and Bush administrations were wrong to push easy lending to low-income borrowers, and the Democratic Congress’s scandalous affair with Freddie and Fannie is enough to make Barney Frank blush (almost).
Wall Street bankers who leveraged $1 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities up to 40 times on the dollar get no sympathy from me. But it is an inescapable - if unpleasant - fact that banks would not be failing or credit markets frozen if borrowers were keeping their word.
This isn’t a failure of finances. It’s a failure of character.
Barney Frankophiles rage against this idea as “blaming the victim.” I ask...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Great article! Just think a little bit of personal responsibility by government people, and these folks wouldn’t have been able to plung head over heels in debt as well.
IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO SAVE ME FROM MY OWN STUPIDITY!!!!!
You're right. I, nor my grandkids, are responsible for their greed and stupidity.
Did anyone else’s 401K go UP yesterday. I was happy to see mine up around 1%. I really was expecting to get slammed.
Obummer thinks it is!!!
No bailout. Time to let the chips fall.
Well now, this cuts right to the problem. Were my parents’ life savings not in the stock market, I would welcome a deep recession for a return to honest values.
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