I marvel at the lengths our government will go to on most things.  This whole financial institution bailout has really got my motor running.  Here’s how I see it.  The banks, seeing real estate prices skyrocketing wanted their piece of the action.  In order to compete with other banks, they lowered rates, relaxed age-old lending practices and basically lost their minds.  Wall street retirements funds, seeing all the money banks were making, made much of their money available as well (after all, if it was a choice between putting it in real estate and seeing gargantuan returns or leaving it elsewhere for minimscule returns when everyone else was cutting the fat calf, what would you do?)

Then real estate, which was wildly (some would say ridiculously) over-inflated, hit the wall and prices started dropping like a stone.  All those people who bought way more house than they needed — and way more than they could afford —  all in the spirit of, “We’ll sell this in a few years and make enough to retire,” got left holding a bag that was too big for them to hold.  The banks, whose rapidly growing wealth had made them giddy, began to see all those people (who went in knowing unequivocally they couldn’t afford to legitimately repay the loan) start to default.  The ripple effect continued through the hedge funds and into the markets themselves until now the whole financial infrastructure in the country is in danger of collapse.

That leads us to today.  The government is going to let people who were responsible enough to live within their means pick up the entire tab for those who weren’t.  Plain and simple.  That’s right.  You’ll be paying for everyone else’s excess.  It would appear that you were stupid to live within your means when everyone else was living the life of Riley, all with no consequence.  Next time I hope you’ll be smarter than that!  

(CLARIFICATION:  Of course I’m being facetious here.  I have always advocated that everyone live in a financially responsible way, and that will never change.  I’m just bitter that — because I’m responsible — I get to bear the burdens of the irresponsible.)

The thing that really sets me off is what would happen if you made some horribly irresponsible business decisions in your business?  That’s exactly right.  You would go under in a heartbeat.  And nobody would give a rats.  They would say, “How could he have been so stupid.  He deserves to be broke.”  But when CEO’s who are making tens of millions a year do exactly the same irresponsible things they say, “The government should save his life.”  In my opinion, intead of saving their lives, they ought to be prosecuting them for malfeasance, misuse of the public’s money, and violation of the trust of the people.  Why are they being rewarded (with a bailout) so they can be free to go do it again?!?!?!?!?

To conclude, if you want to know who I vote for in this upcoming election, it’s NOBODY!  These people are all a bunch of self-serving, incompetent followers.  Nodoby has the cojones to stand up and say, “This is bad.  But if we bail them out, we’re only perpetuating the problem.”  No, we absolutely don’t need more government oversight or guidelines (and since the government is investing hundreds of billions in the bailout that’s exactly what they’re going to want to do) — far from it.  We need the law of natural selection to teach these bankers what they already knew: when you lend to people who can’t afford to repay, they will default on the loan.  Letting the chips fall where they fall and letting the natural consequences take over will teach the banks infinitely more than all the government oversight in the world could teach them.

Like the saying goes, you can choose your actions, but you can’t choose the consequence of that action — that is unless you have immunity from stupidity.  In which case nobody learns anything and we’re doomed to continue making the same mistakes over and over.