My understanding of the financial crisis on Wall Street is that Bush & Co. would like us to believe that parts of our financial system have a potentially fatal disease, and unless they quickly receive a miracle cash injection in the right financial artery, a pandemic will ensue. The illness will keep spreading, and the entire US economy will be wiped out.
The opposite side thinks the disease isn't really all that contagious, and since the victims caught it by doing something they shouldn't have, they deserve to die. They tell us that the illness is a natural consequence of risky behavior, and that those financial institutions who don't engage in it will remain healthy. Although the US economy will be severely weakened by the loss of so many firms, this is basically Darwin's survival of the fittest at work, and things will eventually return back to normal.
I'm not an economist, so I'm having a hard time determining what is actually true, and what is just partisan propaganda. But what I don't hear in all this rhetoric is how either of these scenarios directly affects me -- the average American. Most of us John and Jane Q. Publics are pretty scared right now. We'd sure like to see our elected officials fix this mess before all of us are out of work and missing payments on our mortgages.
Most of us don't really care if Goldman Sachs goes under, or Citigroup buys Wachovia for pennies on the dollar. Despite the claims of Wall Street, most Americans don't have big investment accounts, and a whole lot of us don't have 401k's or pension or other retirement funds. Our biggest investment is the house we live in. We count on it to appreciate in value, whether we live in it for two years or 20. When we get ready to retire, we sell the place, and use the proceeds to supplement the pittance that is Social Security. That's our American Dream.
We've spent the last few years seeing that dream turn into a nightmare. Our homes have lost, not gained value. The people in our neighborhoods who walked away from homes they couldn't pay for any longer and let the bank foreclose, have lowered the values of our properties even more. Many of our homes are now worth less than we paid for them. Those of us lucky enough to have 401k accounts have seen them get smaller and smaller every day. We're going backwards, and it's really, really scary.
We average citizens know that the economy needs an infusion of cash. Consumers should be out there buying stuff. But fuel prices and inflation have increased the cost of goods and services astronomically. We can't buy as much. We have to choose between paying for the gas we need to get to and from work (those of us that still have jobs) and going to McDonald's. We have to choose between paying the mortgage and buying our kids their school supplies. Some of us who don't have jobs or live on fixed incomes have to choose whether to buy food or medicine.
But according to our President and his advisers, what will fix this is for the government to borrow thousands of dollars from each one of us, with no promise of repayment. My immediate reaction to that is, "Hey George, you know that old phrase about blood and turnips?"
And my message to my congressman is this, "Don't you dare take money out of my pocket and give it to people who made millions of dollars preying on the weakest of us!" If the government wants to bail out the economy, they need to start at the bottom, not the top.