Thursday, December 4, 2008

Bailout Hypocrisy, part 1

Who doesn’t love a hypocrite?

Here we are, two months after we were told that the sky was going to fall without a bailout of the financial sector. And lo and behold…it is still standing! Crisis averted!

But here is the question of the hour (and has been for many hours now): who gets ‘em? Which institutions get bailed out?
  • Bear Stearns
  • AIG
  • not Lehman Bros.
  • Citi
  • not yet, Big Three!
Is anyone minding this store? Is anyone paying attention to what is going on with this money? Does anyone care? Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson asked for a blank check of $700 BILLION and pretty much got it from a compliant Congress.

Secretary Paulson is the former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, a company that directly benefited from the downfall of Lehman Bros.

Then he decides that after spending only 1/3 of the money, that he would save the rest for the next president. Nobody seems to be asking why he needed $700 Bil if he were only going to spend $250.

Then he changed his mind again.

Do we have any better idea of who is getting this money?
Who will get this money?
Who has already received this money?
And what the criteria is for receiving this money?

For some reason, these questions continue to go unanswered.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amen. I am torn about the bailout in general, and who should receive what specifically. Part of me thinks the bailout should never have occurred in the first place and we should have just allowed this to all shake down, but as a new home buyer and as a husband who still works for the city of Detroit (albeit from Pittsburgh) I am grateful for parts of it. It's hard to know how to feel when eduction on the matter is conspicuously absent.