'Bailout Psychology' Destroying The Economy

SFGate ^ | April 5, 2009 | Sean Olender

[Doofer]

President Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It's time to focus on anti-poverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness. Stealth payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately.

Since the mid-1970s, average Americans' wages have stayed flat when adjusted for inflation. Productivity rose, profits rose, but not wages. To compensate for stagnant wages and the desire to consume more each year, Americans worked more, retired later, spouses went to work, and many burned savings. Then they started borrowing. Debt became America's growth industry.

The scheme collapsed because Americans' wages weren't sufficient to pay the interest on existing debts. The only way out of this is to tighten our belts and pay down debt, the opposite of what our bank-owned government is advising.

The administration and the banks keep talking about a credit crisis, but there isn't one. Banks are lending. If you want a mortgage and can afford to pay it back, you can borrow at low rates today. You can finance a car at low rates for seven years. But most Americans don't want more debt because it is a debilitating path to poverty. The average American family already pays 14 percent of annual income in interest to banks.

To fix this fake crisis, there are fake discussions about what the government must do. The endlessly recycled plan to buy "troubled" assets isn't to get banks lending again, because they haven't stopped lending. The plan seeks for taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich investors' losses.

That's it. It keeps coming back as a different plan, but with that same goal. There is no goal beyond that one goal: keep rich people from taking losses.

[Doofer]

Obama and his economic gurus all chant, "Credit is the lifeblood of the economy," but they don't mean credit. They mean debt. Imagine the president saying, "Debt is the lifeblood of our economy. We desperately need to get more American families deeper in debt." That's what he means, and that's what these bailouts hope to do.

[Kansas58]

This particular article is written by a true Communist!

It is not the job of a capitalist government, in a Constitutional Republic, to “correct” ANY of the problems the author dreams up.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

He can’t prosecute them. Most of them are his advisers or contributed a great deal to his political campaigns, or are part of the Democrat Leadership, such as it is.

[dr_who]

It's time to focus on anti-poverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness.

This is just sentence number 2 of the editorial, and they're already contradicting themselves. Anti-poverty programs aren't going to pull the country out of recession.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

All of these “victims” were forced, at gunpoint, to go heavily into debt. Car dealers threatened to beat them senseless if they didn’t buy expensive vehicles and sign up for long-term car loans.

[VRWC For Truth]

RICO = Frank and Dodd. Ain't going to happen with the ‘Rat majority.

[eclecticEel]

The guy seems somewhat on-the-ball about the problems with Zero’s economic strategy; but then his proposed solutions are way out of left field.

[Doofer]

The guy seems somewhat on-the-ball about the problems with Zero’s economic strategy; but then his proposed solutions are way out of left field.

I agree about his solutions being out there but what I find encouraging is the the MSM is picking up on the fact that the Administrations economic policies are boneheaded.

[Lorianne]

Are they FINALLY catching on?

Arianna [Huffington] Tells Katie Couric: Bank Bailout Could Be Obama’s “Achilles’ Heel”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/arianna-tells-katie-couri_n_193324.html#postComment