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Dear Congress -- I'd like to suggest to you that everyone should just disengage their underwear from their butt cracks and stop fidgeting. Yes, there's a financial crisis that needs to be addressed. Yes, it's possible that the correct response to make here is to bail out corporations that have misbehaved. But...
We don't have to do that today. We don't even have to do that this week. Let's all calm down and talk this over. Consult with some experts on economics who have nothing to do with the Bush administration. Get their views. Consider what the consequences of each of your options is likely to be, good and bad. Make certain that we're not going to be throwing paper money at a raging fire which is just going to incinerate it. Maybe, just maybe, you should even consider bailing out citizens with bad mortgages rather than the company who coerced them into this position. As Obama said, you certainly should make certain that any plan you come up with doesn't reward these corporations and corporate officers for their poor judgments and greed.
Calm down. Slow down. React because you have a good plan with a reasonable expectation of success; don't just react because you feel that politically you must.
Remember, this is the same administration that has fibbed to you about the economy (among other things) all along. They've told you that the economy is sound. They've said that deregulation was the way to go because the marketplace is self-correcting. They've told you the problem is oil speculators. They've told you that, oh, it's just the mortgage lenders. They've told you that it's short sellers. They've told you that those tex rebate checks would put the economy right back on track. They've told you that all we needed to do was bail out Fannie and Freddie and everything would be fine. They told you to let Lehman just go down the toilet, and things would be fine. Now they're telling you that AIG needs to be bailed out, and they need $700 billion or more of taxpayer money, and everything will be fine. And oh, by the way, we don't want any actual oversight on this: just give us the blank check and Paulson will handle everything. By himself.
Trust us.
Don't trust them. These people have lied to you for eight years now about nearly everything. Whenever you've believed them before and acted as they asked you to act, they have pissed in your beer, laughing at your gullibility.
Stop trusting them. Stop doing what they tell you to do. You jumped when they said "We must go to war or the terrorists will eat our children." You jumped when they said "You must let the executive branch illegally wiretap or the terrorists will tattoo the Koran on your eyelids." You jumped when they said "Argh! Weapons of mass destruction; we must go stomp!" You jumped when they said "Ohmigod! Habeas Corpus is a horrible concept and it's Latin besides -- get rid of it!" You jumped when... well, the litany goes on and on.
Now it's time not to jump when they say "You must shovel money in our direction or the entire financial world will crumple around us and it will be your fault."
It's not your fault. It's their fault. Your job is to be the adult here. Go slow. Examine the situation. Get opinions you can trust. Then make up your best plan of action and put it into motion. If that happens to occur next month rather than this week, that's OK. Don't do something half-ass just to do something.
OK? Good. Now take a breath and get to work. Thanks for listening.
We don't have to do that today. We don't even have to do that this week. Let's all calm down and talk this over. Consult with some experts on economics who have nothing to do with the Bush administration. Get their views. Consider what the consequences of each of your options is likely to be, good and bad. Make certain that we're not going to be throwing paper money at a raging fire which is just going to incinerate it. Maybe, just maybe, you should even consider bailing out citizens with bad mortgages rather than the company who coerced them into this position. As Obama said, you certainly should make certain that any plan you come up with doesn't reward these corporations and corporate officers for their poor judgments and greed.
Calm down. Slow down. React because you have a good plan with a reasonable expectation of success; don't just react because you feel that politically you must.
Remember, this is the same administration that has fibbed to you about the economy (among other things) all along. They've told you that the economy is sound. They've said that deregulation was the way to go because the marketplace is self-correcting. They've told you the problem is oil speculators. They've told you that, oh, it's just the mortgage lenders. They've told you that it's short sellers. They've told you that those tex rebate checks would put the economy right back on track. They've told you that all we needed to do was bail out Fannie and Freddie and everything would be fine. They told you to let Lehman just go down the toilet, and things would be fine. Now they're telling you that AIG needs to be bailed out, and they need $700 billion or more of taxpayer money, and everything will be fine. And oh, by the way, we don't want any actual oversight on this: just give us the blank check and Paulson will handle everything. By himself.
Trust us.
Don't trust them. These people have lied to you for eight years now about nearly everything. Whenever you've believed them before and acted as they asked you to act, they have pissed in your beer, laughing at your gullibility.
Stop trusting them. Stop doing what they tell you to do. You jumped when they said "We must go to war or the terrorists will eat our children." You jumped when they said "You must let the executive branch illegally wiretap or the terrorists will tattoo the Koran on your eyelids." You jumped when they said "Argh! Weapons of mass destruction; we must go stomp!" You jumped when they said "Ohmigod! Habeas Corpus is a horrible concept and it's Latin besides -- get rid of it!" You jumped when... well, the litany goes on and on.
Now it's time not to jump when they say "You must shovel money in our direction or the entire financial world will crumple around us and it will be your fault."
It's not your fault. It's their fault. Your job is to be the adult here. Go slow. Examine the situation. Get opinions you can trust. Then make up your best plan of action and put it into motion. If that happens to occur next month rather than this week, that's OK. Don't do something half-ass just to do something.
OK? Good. Now take a breath and get to work. Thanks for listening.
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I'm not saying that the bail out is a terrible idea. I don't pretend to know economics that well. It may be exactly the way to go here. But I'd hate to see us throw hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to save corporations and not 1) have it work, or 2) have it be an unnecessary step.
There's acting quickly, and then there's acting hastily. I don't want us to be hasty here.
(I sound like Treebeard. Hoom, hoom!)
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