Monday, December 5, 2011

Reaction to Stimulus Package Debate (2008)


Democrats push $50 billion stimulus plan on top of $700 billion bank rescue.
Macroeconomics
Jeff Bailey
October 7, 2008


            In a time of panic and a collapsing financial market, the government has stepped in to try and jumpstart the economy. The proposed bill would give troubled banks money to keep them from going bankrupt as well as give the American people a stimulus check to encourage spending. All this will have a positive effect in the short term, but looking at the long term effects, this will have been forgotten.
            Pushing for this plan is futile. The plan would put us even more in debt to foreign countries and would not help the economy very much overall. In the article it said “…in the short run, could be as small as one-tenth of 1 percent per quarter. That is not enough to turn the slump in the economy around. Our economy is the way it is because the people who are in power, who have created this bailout plan, are the ones who let this happen because government oversight in the housing and mortgage industries was pretty much non-existent. Although the idea behind it makes sense, in economic properties, this plan just makes no sense. We are footing the bill for many large corporations whose greed lead to where we are now. Why should the US taxpayers be forced to pay for their idiocy? They shouldn’t, there are too many other things to worry about, such as inflation. Using all this money to bailout these banks is going to increase the national debt and put the strain on our children’s generation.
            During this whole bailout debate, republicans and democrats have argued purely for political reasons (re-election is coming up soon) and not looking at the whole picture. I don’t want to have to pay for other people’s mistakes, especially since I know if I had a loan and defaulted, the banks, nor the government would step in and bail me out. I would be on my own in a world of trouble. To me this is unfair and is very similar to fascism, which is when the government buys key industries for the betterment of the whole. If we want to fight this recession, we have to cut our spending. There are many ways to do that. There are many government programs that need not exist, and others that do not function correctly anymore. If we were to end the Iraq war tomorrow, we would save over $700 million a day. That would allow us to cut down the national debt. Another way would be to cut military spending by bringing everyone home and closing down foreign bases. This would also allow more money to be spent on other programs that are needed more such as health or education. There is so much wasteful spending in this country and that has a lot to do with who is in power. Speaking of power, the current president has the most power delegated to him than any other president in history.
I think the best course of action for America to do is to start worrying about our own people first. We need to take care of each other here before we can take care of the rest of the world. We can use the money we have on things that are so much better and would be more beneficial. People should be mad about this and do something about it. The money the banks get can be used for anything they want to use it for, rather than the government telling them how to use it to re-stabilize the financial industry. $188 billion dollars per day was created by the Federal Reserve to help the failing financial sector, and that was on top of the stimulus package and the bailout.  If the bailout would have not been passed, a back-up plan was created that would give $630 billion to the financial markets. In just one week, we have handed out over a trillion dollars to these banks, and we the taxpayers will see no benefit from that.
            In conclusion, I say let the banks fall. It’s about time corporate greed caught up to the CEO’s of the banks that are failing. With risk comes consequences, good and bad, but for America to take on the burden of the risks of a few is just plain ridiculous. America is no longer the land of the free, but rather the land of greed.

No comments:

Post a Comment