20 Reasons Why The Bailout Idea Sucks

The bailout idea is wending its way through congress as we speak. In my non-economist, common sense, uneducated opinion, here are 20 reasons why the bail out is a bad idea all the way around...

1. One person will be in control of the program without any kind of oversight. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
2. The government is in charge of making and enforcing laws and some other things. No where in the Constitution does it say the government should own major businesses. The government can't even run the government and now we are going to expand its reach? Dumb.
3. The plan is to use good taxpayer money which could be used for infrastructure, children's health programs and a million other good causes in order to buy bad debt. If my broker said "I'm going to take your retirement money and buy bad debt with it" I would fire him. Immediately.
4. The bad debts are supposedly going to be purchased, repackaged and sold to...who? Let's see...the largest generation in history is heading towards retirement--they will be taking money from the system instead of putting money into the system. The government is gung ho on deporting 12 million wage earning, car/home/food buying illegal immigrants so scratch them from the pool of purchasers. The birth rate is 14.1 per 1000 in our country so we aren't growing a huge crop of new investors. That leaves...?
5. The free market needs to correct itself. Meddling by anyone (the government, investors, financiers, the mafia or anyone else) does not work over the long term.
6. Congress was given exactly seven days to sign off on this program. My grand daddy used to say that anyone who uses a hard sell tactic ("buy now or you will never get the opportunity to do so again") to get you to hurry up and make a decision without thinking things through completely usually is trying to rip you off. Grand daddy was right about 99.9% of the time.
7. The economy is going to implode to one extent or the other; I would rather have it happen now and not push the problem off to my kids and grand kids.
8. If a company is failing, no matter its size, that means it isn't economically viable. What happens when the government's money stops coming in?
9. You can't artificially keep prices up forever. Whether we are talking about home prices, stock prices, interest rates, etc, artificially inflating prices eventually back fires.
10. Let's see...over paid executive drives company into the ground. Government rewards bankrupt company and over paid executive. Over paid executive gets to keep job and continue running company into the ground and continue being over paid. Lovely.
11. If this bailout happens, all big companies will assume that the government will bail them out no matter how stupidly the run their companies.
12. Who will be next to suck the taxpayers dry? ATT? Microsoft? Exxon? The Big Three Automakers? Hell, why doesn't the government just take over all of the businesses in the US--we will be just like the Communists, our staunch enemy for so many decades. I'm confused.
13. The powers that be said the bail out "might work", "should work", "will probably work". Obviously they don't know since this has never happened before. I don't want to bet the farm of "might", "should", and "probably".
14. Companies that behaved badly, stupidly, fraudulently, et al. will get rewarded and companies that were responsible, honest, and fiscally prudent will get..squat. Great.
15. The bail out costs nearly a trillion freaking dollars!
16. The American economy needs to rebuild itself on real dollars from real people not on hyped up investment schemes that crumble like a house of cards with the first small breeze.
17. Elections are coming up. When people are scrambling to keep or become elected to their job, I wouldn't trust any of 'em.
18. This plan would cause the government to be the enabler in the financial disaster relationship. Much like parents who continue to bail out their children who run up huge credit card debt by paying their bills and hoping they will change (they never do), the government will be enabling big business to continue down their financially destructive path.
19. The people who are putting this plan together say that without the bailout, credit markets will tighten up and people won't be able to get credit. Hooray! Can you imagine people paying cash for the things they want and need? Can you imagine people not living under the yoke of permanent debt? Can you image people saving money for future purchases? Wow.
20. The Bush/Cheney regime has been using fear and intimidation to reach all of their ends. The Patriot Act? Check. The let's send $600 to each taxpayer so they can go shopping? Check. The Iraq war? Check. I'm tired of my government keeping me in a constant state of fear. No wonder high blood pressure is rampant in our country. Good grief!

I'll hop off of my soap box now.