angryA Trillion Dollars for the Banks: How About a Second Opinion?
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants to have the government lend up to a trillion dollars to hedge funds, private equity, funds and the banks themselves to clear their books of toxic assets. The plan implies a substantial subsidy to the banks. It is likely to result in the disposal of these assets at far above market value, with the government picking up the losses.
As much as we all want to help out the Wall Street bankers in their hour of need, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether this is the best use of our money.
Off the top of my head, I'd rather see that money spent on providing affordable health care to people who don't have any right now, or education, or green energy, homeowner rescue, or direct job creation. Supposing a modestly decent salary of $25,000 that amount would create 40 million jobs. We could pick 40 pretty big projects that need work and put a million people on each of them. Aim for areas that don't require much if any extra materials, where it's a shortage of money to hire people for things already in progress, and that will reduce overhead. But you could take out a fifth of that money for processing and materials, and still leave the salaries at a decent $20,000/year. That would benefit a lot of people directly, and get a lot of things done, and it would be better than pissing away another trillion dollars on rich imbeciles who apparently can't count without taking off their thousand-dollar shoes.
April 6 2009, 23:49:49 UTC 12 years ago
(grumble grumble grumble grumble grumble)
*sigh*
April 7 2009, 00:08:11 UTC 12 years ago
2) That the economy would run better if the expensive "experts" were replaced by single parents who have been feeding a family on minimum-wage part-time jobs and by gods know how to make not enough go farther than it logically should.
3) That a healthy sustainable society must meet the needs of most of its people most of the time, because if it does not, sooner or later they will smash it to flinders and replace it with something they think will work better.
April 7 2009, 00:17:52 UTC 12 years ago
I think people should watch this even though it's a family movie. It is just as important today, especially with the look at the "hobo" (today "homeless") perspective. Kit does an article about how the hobos help each other out, a really moving piece that she tries to get published at the Cincinatti Register. The editor doesn't want to publish it at first because the public is feeling very anti-hobo.
You, especially, would like it I think. It talks about "hobo signs," a kind of code writing hobos used to help each other out. Also it has great tips for stretching one's dollar, like making dresses out of chicken feed sacks.
Cool!
April 7 2009, 02:03:07 UTC 12 years ago