Irresponsible People
Posted on
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Politicians often say things that are unintentionally ironic. Sen. John McCain said something yesterday that was so infuriatingly ironic, my eyes practically exploded into a shower of viscera and gore. Sen. McCain is weak on the economy at the best of times, and rarely compassionate, but this statement would be laughable if the pain it represents wasn't so dire.
McCain speaks of wanting to take a "do-no-harm" approach to the economic problems caused by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. He wants to make sure that government isn't going to make concrete efforts to help people save their homes when the bank man comes. Instead, he wants to rely on the same lenders who got consumers into a bind in the first place to help out homeowners facing foreclosure. I'm sure they'll do so out of the goodness of their hearts, you know, the hearts that decided to sell people mortgages with time bomb rate resets.
But this is the statement that got my goat:
Let's parse this statement. We don't want to reward irresponsible people, like the ones who missed a payment or two because they had little or no health insurance and contracted an expensive illness. We don't want to reward those people by helping them keep their houses.
But it's ok for the Fed to pay out BILLIONS to allow one gigantic investment bank buy out another investment bank that got into trouble for putting too many of its investments into mortgage-backed funds? Bear Stearns pumped billions of dollars into risky mortgage-backed investments, and is going straight down the shitter because no one believes those investments are worth the paper they are printed on anymore. Bear Stearns knew the risks of those investments, investments no one could accurately value, which seems like pretty damn irresponsible behavior to me. But let's do bail them out.
Much better to bail out the shareholders of Bear Stearns, people likely to already have deployed their golden parachutes, than to help out Joe Six-Pack with no savings, shitty or non-existent health insurance who got behind on his mortgage. After all, if those shareholders lose their shirts on Bear Stearns, they might lose millions, while Joe Six-Pack only loses his devalued home, which is the entire sum of his net worth. Everything Joe Six-Pack has invested is in that house. Shareholders in Bear Stearns are at least well-off enough to be able to buy stock that was at one time valued at upwards of $171 a share.
Remember, if you have no stock, you're irresponsible. If you own stock in a hedge fund merchant, you're a vital part of the economy.
Fuck you, Senator McCain. Just go ahead and call us regular jagoffs "ungrateful plebes" and "filthy commoners" and be done with it. Maybe you'll even let us have cake.
McCain speaks of wanting to take a "do-no-harm" approach to the economic problems caused by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. He wants to make sure that government isn't going to make concrete efforts to help people save their homes when the bank man comes. Instead, he wants to rely on the same lenders who got consumers into a bind in the first place to help out homeowners facing foreclosure. I'm sure they'll do so out of the goodness of their hearts, you know, the hearts that decided to sell people mortgages with time bomb rate resets.
But this is the statement that got my goat:
"Any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were
irresponsible at the expense of those who weren't," he said.
Let's parse this statement. We don't want to reward irresponsible people, like the ones who missed a payment or two because they had little or no health insurance and contracted an expensive illness. We don't want to reward those people by helping them keep their houses.
But it's ok for the Fed to pay out BILLIONS to allow one gigantic investment bank buy out another investment bank that got into trouble for putting too many of its investments into mortgage-backed funds? Bear Stearns pumped billions of dollars into risky mortgage-backed investments, and is going straight down the shitter because no one believes those investments are worth the paper they are printed on anymore. Bear Stearns knew the risks of those investments, investments no one could accurately value, which seems like pretty damn irresponsible behavior to me. But let's do bail them out.
Much better to bail out the shareholders of Bear Stearns, people likely to already have deployed their golden parachutes, than to help out Joe Six-Pack with no savings, shitty or non-existent health insurance who got behind on his mortgage. After all, if those shareholders lose their shirts on Bear Stearns, they might lose millions, while Joe Six-Pack only loses his devalued home, which is the entire sum of his net worth. Everything Joe Six-Pack has invested is in that house. Shareholders in Bear Stearns are at least well-off enough to be able to buy stock that was at one time valued at upwards of $171 a share.
Remember, if you have no stock, you're irresponsible. If you own stock in a hedge fund merchant, you're a vital part of the economy.
Fuck you, Senator McCain. Just go ahead and call us regular jagoffs "ungrateful plebes" and "filthy commoners" and be done with it. Maybe you'll even let us have cake.
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 2:51 PM
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1 Comments:
It makes sense as long as you accept the fact that "irresponsible" equals "poor."
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