Friday, January 30, 2009

Transparent Bailout Money

Where will this bailout money come from? Who has enough US dollars to loan money to us? Are we going to print money? Isn’t debt limited to the amount of money in existence? Isn’t value limited to what someone is willing to pay for something?

In a recession, you don’t get to set value and demand taxpayer payments for the difference between what people are willing to pay and what you say the widget is worth. Get out of town. Somebody lost their ass and everybody is making sure it’s not theirs lost too. You might have risked money on an investment recommended by the licensed, respected ones who finally found a way to make it big by gulling people. Are contracts written based on fraud invalid? If so, this mortgage derivative scam could be summarily cancelled and let the civil courts go after the money and the criminal courts go after the fraud. I suspect that the total sold far exceeds the amount in existence, so who will not get the delivery they paid for? That is what is under discussion now, after the moguls who engineered and profited from the boondoggle collected, redefining the old fashioned word ‘bonus’ in the process, collecting a nice cushion against hard times in the form of cold cash, not the promises on paper. They give tapeworm a bad name while the unemployment lines lengthen.

So where is this money coming from? Debt enslavement is a bit out of fashion, as so longterm servitude is not one of our intentions. Spill this information now and maybe we can finally see ourselves as some in other nations see us, according to our Viejo Treasury secretary promising what change? I am glad he is sure of all those national viewpoints, since oversight in that treasury department has been lacking but perhaps the new President will take responsibility. I just hope that propping up a failed business model does not further an ego already quite large while charging it all to the taxpayers. Mortgage derivatives are a failure. Propping up mortgage derivatives is a failure.

Any government entity taking federal funds should not give bonuses, only pay. Particularly if this entity is paying for such unearned money with tax money solicited as too important to fail, then no ‘bonuses’ should be rewarded for this failure of free enterprise. Any bonuses awarded while balance sheets headed for the red should be returned to investors. Perpetrator incomes should perhaps dip to the level of the present income of the poorest investor in the schemes.

But I stray from the topic of where the bailout money and the TARP money is coming from? Are we incurring foreign debt? If so, then to whom? For how long? What variables are being overlooked when predicting payment schedules? What variables were taken into account?

Transparency can be defined many ways. I want to know where this money is coming from, not just where it is going.

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