Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Please Explain this to Me

I was just getting Noah dressed (which takes awhile since it involves at least a five minute lotion rub-down everyday to keep him from turning gray) and CNN was on in the background. There was a group of US Senators holding a press conference where they were all going on and on, expressing outrage at the $15 billion bailout of the auto industry. They are a little peeved that the restructuring requirements for the automakers aren't going far enough and that there won't be enough accountability with how the money is spent.

All of these bailouts are making me crazy, so I'm with the senators on that one. What I don't appear to be smart enough to understand though is why on earth wasn't there more outrage with the $700 billion bailout of the financial institutions? Isn't $700 billion a LOT more than $15 billion? Isn't there even less oversight and accountability with the financial institutions and the money that they were given? They were supposed to give at least part of that money to homeowners in the form of restructured loans, but no sooner had the bill been passed that the guys on top decided that banks should be able to use that money to enrich themselves instead. They have already spent almost $350 billion dollars and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight to the mess that they created. Now they want the other half of their bailout, even though the first half wasn't spent according to what we were all told, and nobody really seems to be blinking an eye about it. Whut??!??

If anybody out there has any tips that will help me understand this insanity, please explain. I'm going shopping now, and you can bet that I will put more thought into whether I should spend an extra $3 on a stocking stuffer for Phil than these guys put into spending our billions. And don't even get me started on this mess with the Illinois governor - Blag-o-what's-his-name. There better be some prison time in that guy's future. I HATE politicians!

Maybe I need to quit watching CNN and cancel my subscription to Newsweek. Being uninformed and ignorant to all of this may be the way to go.

Thanks, dear blog, for the opportunity to vent.

1 comments:

Lydia said...

I have to second that.