Financial bailout angers Americans

by Dillon Cooper

With the world on the edge of a global depression, many American citizens are left wondering, what do I do? How could we let it get this far? How we got here is easy: because of greedy Wall Street investors, and banks lending money or loaning money to people with bad credit, no credit, or not even have established credit!

With big companies like AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not having a leg to stand on, there was a solution. A solution that would cut a hole in the pockets of the taxpayers and empty them like a bully stealing a kid’s lunch money. “There has been a whole lot of greed that has caused this situation, but I’m kind of perplexed that neither of our politicians on either side, Republican nor Democrat, are pointing fingers back at us, the American people, because we are the ones that went on this ridiculous spending spree,” said social studies teacher Mr. Lovell. “Now no one has stopped the spend, spend, spend, use your credit card going deeper into debt, spending on this and spending on that. I also think someone needs to criticize an American society for the reckless spending that we do. Sooner or later we have to get more responsible with our own pocket books, too!” exclaimed Mr. Lovell. “I was opposed to the bailout, I’m more of a free market man,” said government teacher Mr. Irelan.

The bailout plan was designed to give AIG $700 billion to pump into the stock market. With AIG spending $440,000 of it on a weekend of luxury, the government is making them pay the money back. “At first I did (support the bailout), but I’m not really for it, but I would have been more for it the first time around than the second time around when they added all the extra spending, so I am very much opposed to what actually passed,” announced Lovell. “At first it was to help the financial market, and then a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats wouldn’t vote for it (the first proposal), and then when they put in a lot of extra spending on things that weren’t even related to it. All of a sudden, they voted for it! So, in other words they’ll vote for any bill that has a lot of wasteful spending, but when it didn’t have the wasteful spending, they didn’t want to vote for it,” Lovell continued. “So it’s what McCain has talked about with pork barrel spending, and both him and Obama favored it,” reacted Lovell. “You’re taking public money to save a private firm; very rarely does it work. That would be like me asking you to help me pay for my boat payment, or car payment, or even my house payment, so if I couldn’t pay them I would have my neighbor come over and help me out with my payments… I don’t think most neighbors would want to do that!” explained Irelan.

Offshore, another rising country is watching our stock market and how its bonds are doing; that country is China. After the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the government, China’s bonds (which include of 10% of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s stocks) are not looking so good. With countries all across the world trying to pump millions and billions of dollars into the stock market trying to get things going, again, things look very grim and dark for the future. With Monday October 13 being the biggest rise ever in the history of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), just one week after the largest decline in the history of the New York Stock Exchange, things look good for now but, as experts predict the worse is yet to come as they predict that unemployment will rise more then 5% nationally within the next two years. Experts also predict that it will take years for the NYSE to fully recover from this financial misfortune! “The stock market (I think) will rebound, but what I don’t agree with is when guys are making $50, $60, $100 million over the period of five or six years and their company is going totally bankrupt, I think the golden parachute is terribly wrong,” Irelan added.There have definitely been mixed thoughts over the past month about the stock market and the financial bailout that would help jump-start the American economy. Whether it would be parents, to teachers, to student, or to even Joe the Plumber, everyone is affected by this crisis and we’re all in this together; only time will tell how long that’ll be for!