Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Bailing out the Macs

Note (added 9/17/08): See post entitled "Doh!" above.

Since the announcement of the federal bailout of Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac, I'm a little surprised that the Republicans aren't screaming about how it's not in keeping with a "Free Market." I guess federal bailouts are okay when rich people make mistakes, but when the working classes are seeing record numbers of foreclosures, we can't bail them out. Ask John "I Don't Know How Many Houses I Own" McCain. Yes, I've heard all the arguments about how, if the Macs go under, it will be devastating to the economy, etc, etc, blah, blah, woof, woof. Still seems to me that it's yet another case of redistributing the wealth from the poor to the rich via our tax system. When it comes right down to it, you know that no matter how bad the economy gets, the Rich Bastards will be just fine. The middle and working classes will bear the brunt of it. After all, isn't that their raison d'ĂȘtre, to keep our rich people rich, no matter what the cost?

Last Friday I was listening to one of my favorite local radio programs, Mel and Floyd (I prefer to call them The Giggle Guys, because of the nice alliteration as well as the fact that pretty much what they do is read the news and giggle while they point out the absurdities in the week's stories while James Brown plays in the background), and they summed up the whole situation pretty well. They called it "privatized profit with socialized risk." Yep. Can't allow those Rich Bastards to lose money. That would be downright un-American. If we don't give them even more of our money, the Community Organizers have already won.

2 comments:

Suzy said...

When a person loses their job and then loses their house, they are "irresponsible." (Just ask John McCain.) When major financial institutions go under, they've "just hit hard times." I know it is unQuakerly to say it, but sometimes I really hate rich people and rich person mentality.

Matthew Hubbard said...

And now we're in the insurance business with AIG. John McCain thought it was a terrible idea, but that was Tuesday. It's Wednesday now and he's okay with it.

What a relief!