Mixed emotions: Mothers-in-law, Porshes and bailouts

[backscatter712]

You know the old joke: Mixed emotions are when you see your mother-in-law driving off a cliff in your new Porsche.

And that's what I'm seeing with the bailout and the potential liquidity crisis.

We know who the mother-in-law is - all those douchebags on Wall Street and in the Beltway - in Congress and on K Street who created this whole mess to begin with - I'm as violently pissed off as just about everyone else is.

But we also have the Porsche - our economy, which will monumentally shit itself if more banks fail, the remaining banks stop accepting credit from each other, and all of the sudden, we find that checks written from one bank aren't accepted at other banks, our direct-deposited paychecks don't go through, businesses start crashing right-and-left, and the U.S. and the world go into economic bedlam.

So, we have to save the Porsche, but in order to do that, we also have to save the mother-in-law.

That's all for now.

[Eric J in MN]

1. If the worldwide financial system comes to a halt, then it wil re-start..

...because people want to do business with each other.

We don't need this bailout.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Unlike the Porsche, though, the economy will self-correct

it might be ugly, and look unfixable for a while and be a bit scary, but the economy will come back - that giant void that will be created by letting companies collapse will be filled by creative, entrepreneurial, crafty people and new ways of doing; and after the self-correcting repair, it will be stronger than the jury-rigged duct-tape repair that a bailout represents. Plus, by jury-rigging with duct tape, we keep all the old CEOs and other criminal fucks in power; we need to let the Porsche fix itself, because it will also then come back with a different guidance system.

A bailout is completely unnecessary.

All the stuff leftover from the collapses (that is, the divisions within those companies, and their capital assets, and their clients, and so forth) is still there - someone will buy it, and do something wonderfully creative with it.


So we can watch the mother-in-law go over the cliff and finally die a horrible well-deserved death, knowing full well that the Porsche will come back crawling up the cliff, and we get it back.

[backscatter712]

3. Ugly doesn't begin to describe what could happen.

Like I said, imagine how complicated your life will become if all of the sudden, your paycheck which was direct-deposited into your bank account suddenly didn't come through, the grocery stores and various shops stopped accepting your credit and debit cards, multiple businesses suddenly shuttered, including maybe your employer, and all the monetary works behind the scenes suddenly stopped working.

Second Great Depression anyone? Yeah, eventually the Porsche might come back on the road eventually, but do you want millions of people to lose their jobs, their homes, everything they've got, while we're waiting?

[smiley_glad_hands]

4. Some people want to spite their nose by cutting off their ear. eom

[backscatter712]

5. That's why I used this analogy.

Too many people are hoping for the death of the mother-in-law that they're not thinking about the Porsche.

[smiley_glad_hands]

7. Great analogy.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. For one thing, it won't be that ugly. Not even close.

Secondly, a bailout will only suffice to prop it up for a time; it won't solve or fix what is actually the real problem, and will just delay it.

And, in my opinion, propping it up and waiting will actually cost us a lot more in the long run. We're better off letting poorly managed companies fail and go into oblivion, and use some government backing to help out individual people.

[ShortnFiery]

8. The bail out will only serve to give the already Filthy Rich - a softer landing.

:grr: Don't do it!

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. That's exactly it - not bailing out will cost the taxpayers less in the long run,

and keep the fat cats from getting fatter.

They should be all getting fired and facing investigation; not be getting taxpayer handouts while their companies disintegrate around them.

[smiley_glad_hands]

10. So when half of America gets laid off, you'll still be ok with no bailout? n/t