The Herald
October 03, 2008 03:02 pm
—
Here are some thoughts from a guy who has figured out a way to solve this financial mess to benefit the little people.
First of all, the duo of George W. Bush and former president Herbert Hoover are to blame for the economic woes.
Obviously, Bush’s administration has to accept a lot of the blame for putting us trillions of dollars in debt. But Herbert Hoover is the reason the government has been pushing for the enormous financial bailout of Wall Street.
After the stock market crash in 1929, some people in the know were pushing for the government to bail out the banks and major corporations that floundered. But Hoover didn’t feel that legislative relief was the answer.
Instead, he thought that volunteerism would work. He wanted banks to join together and bigger banks to lend money to smaller banks. Man, was that ridiculous thinking or what.
Well, we all know what happened. There was a huge run on the banks with more than 5,000 failing, the economy collapsed, unemployment shot up to more than 24 percent and the Great Depression was under way.
If we don’t learn from history, it’s destined to repeat itself.
So while a majority of Americans don’t want the government to bail out these huge financial institutions that got themselves into trouble by giving out sub-prime loans that hurt them and the home owners, we probably have no choice.
If that doesn’t happen, the probable scenario is: The stock market will continue to drop, there will be another big run on the banks and financial institutions, credit will be nonexistent and businesses will wilt. More people will lose their homes, more banks will fail and unemployment will soar.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that it won’t happen anyway. But we do have a choice on how the bailout should work.
Here’s how I would have handled it. While I may not be the smartest man in the world, I think I’m way smarter than Sarah Palin or George Bush. So here’s my solution:
First, we take the $850 billion they want to give away and first cut out all the pork.
Then, instead of giving $700 billion to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and AIG and these other big financial institutions with no regulations throw in, all $850 billion goes directly to the taxpayers who must someday foot the bill for the country’s deficit.
Every adult in America would be granted the sum of $4,000 or so. While it’s not a massive amount individually, it will work collectively. But it’s not in the form of cash. If you had mortgages or credit debt with any financial institution (FI), that amount of money would go directly to the bank or other FI to shrink your debt. That would immediately prop up the FIs which they could then redistribute in low interest loans to trustworthy people.
But at least for a short time, it also bails out all the homeowners and small-business owners who are losing their properties.
If you don’t owe anything, you don’t get cash, but instead receive $4,000 worth of stock in one of the major FIs and the money would go directly to the treasury of that FI. You are not permitted to sell that stock for three years.
Therefore instead of the government’s plan of giving money to Wall Street and then “promising” a trickle down to so-called Main Street, my plan is give the money to Main Street and let it trickle up to Wall Street.
Since the major stock holders on Wall Street would then be Main Street we would all have a chance to someday live on Easy Street.
This is a simple economic plan I developed in a book I’m writing called “Monopoly Made Easy” and subtitled “Boardwalk and Park Place Are Where You Want to Put Your Hotels.”
And for our United States senators and representatives: Go directly to jail, do not collect $200.
The Herald’s Lynn Saternow writes this column each Saturday for the Opinion page.
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Lynn Saternow The Herald