Recently, I received a correspondence from a dear friend—my twin brother—regarding his disgust with our elected officials for enabling appointed cabinet members to literally waste our money and incur debts that simply can’t be paid.
Corporations who have failed because of fictitious accounting practices deserve what they get. Their shareholders should hold them accountable. The gluttonous crooks should have to reimburse shareholders and face imprisonment. Moreover, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department could definitely spend $700 billion a little wiser.
My brother had a marvelous idea. Why not take the $700 billion and divide it among the 302 million citizens of this great country. By my estimate, each citizen would receive approximately $2.3 million.
Conceivably, this amount of money would guarantee a healthier economy. I’m not an economist, but I feel comfortable saying: Hell, yes, it would.
— Jeff H. Hayes
Asheville
Nope $2300. However, you have shown that you do have the qualifications to be an economist.
Editor’s note: Unfortunately, the error in the above math (did you spot it?) was caught too late to correct in our print edition. Make that $2.3 THOUSAND per person. But what are a few zeros among friends, eh?
Nelda Holder, associate editor
Where does the U.S. Treasury get $700 billion?
“Where does the U.S. Treasury get $700 billion?”
I listened to several economists and politicians discussing this very question last night. The answer is: they float bonds and T-bills, selling them to whoever (which means most of the purchases will be China). So, the next couple of generations will be incumbered with this scheme of socialism for Wall Street, based upon nothing more than “we hope it will work” and “if we don’t do it, it will be far worse.” And, this will further insure that communist China essentially owns our futures, lock, stock and barrel. Ah, the magic of unfettered, unregulated capitalism. Thanks, Phil Gramm.
Dionysis, I don’t know how you can go from a fairly accurate description of the pernicious effects of government intervention in the free market to a sweeping, sarcastic condemnation of capitalism.
In my opinion, the only thing missing in the crisis is a large dose of real ‘laizzez-faire’ capitalism.
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Bailout Roundup:
http://timpeck.blogspot.com/2008/09/bailout-roundup.html
timpeck,
I might possibly go for it if we first broke up every corporation above a certain level of capitalization in order to give all capitalists a level playing field and too remove the advantages gained through prior manipulation of the system.
Barring that, saying further deregulation is the answer is crazy talk.
timpeck,
It wasn’t so much a “sweeping condemnation of capitalism” as it was an indictment of what you refer to as laisses-faire’ (or completely unfettered) capitalism. I think vrede’s comments reflect my own fairly closely.
A completely free market, devoid of any oversight, brings as much bad as it fosters good. The current mess is but one painful example, spawned from the complete gutting of depression-era regulations.
To claim that we have any form of capitalism in this country is not accurate.
Of course, I apologize for the numeric mistake. However, I don’t deal with numbers with such high values on a daily basis, and I feel comfortable saying most of my associates and friends don’t either.
Your answer is somewhat correct, they float bonds and T-bills, selling them to whomever will purchase a futuristic devalued dollar (which means most of the purchases will be China).
The bottom line is we the “People” (tax payer) will absorb yet another massive tax burden. We will chomp on debts that taste like the back side of a goats ass and the goat’s ass is going to be expensive.
Paulson, “on our behalf”, has already loaned 315 billion dollars out to Three failing financial institutions, and he had the audacity to ask for 700 billion more. This is a large fallacy created expeditiously to attempt a false image of a healthy economy.
Folks, make no mistake – this is our money and any losses we experience will result in more taxes for all of us. Plus, the concealed income tax will be the enormous loss in the purchasing capacity of the U.S. Dollar, and the slave labor for U.S. citizens for many generations to come.
This is a wake up call for all U.S. citizens to say Hell no to our elected officials. We can not allow Wall street CEO’s to continue with their voracious appetites for money. They can’t even take their money or wealth to their graves. More importantly, we can’t allow or tolerate government to dictate such frivolous actions to deepen their hands further into our lives and our pockets.
$2,300 pretty much sinks the whole premise of the brother’s marvelous idea. I am guessing he is a Democrat?
Well, trav if he was a repub he would want a bit more….like 23 million.
No matter how you slice it, this is a travesty for America and all who live in and love it.
At least now if Obama gets elected and has to raise taxes on everyone you can then cry the old “I told you a dem would raise taxes” This is going to affect us for many generations.
I would not even conceive of wanting to inherit the total shambles the Bush Cheneys have left the country in…For that reason (and that one only) I hope McCain wins.
Still, 23 anything is a cool number.
ok…I am certainly not an economist, but I went to the calculator..had to use the one on my computer the little one on my desk won’t compute that much! Anyway, someone on here said the 700 billion would average out to about 2,300 per person. Well I don’t get it.. if there is about 305,275,800 millin people in the US (at least when I checked) and you double that..you get 610,551,600 million, so I figure if each person represents a million dollars..isn’t that
700,000,000,000 (700 billion)
– 610,551,600 (610.6 million)
which leaves…699,389,448,400 BILLION!!!
so if I’m right (and that would be a shock!) we could in theory give every American 2 million bucks and still have almost 699 and a half billion left!!! please tell me where I’m going wrong here, cause I’m listening to these people on tv and I think I’m about to go nuts!
there is 1000 million per billion right?
Deborah, your math is way off. The total US population according to a July 2008 estimate was 303,824,640. Of that approximately 25% are under the age of 18.
Therefore you multiply 303,824,640 x 75% to get the amount of Americans 18 and older. (Don’t think we need to give stimulus checks to 6 year olds) That equals 227,868,480 eligible.
You then divide 700,000,000,000 by 227,868,480 to get to amount each eligible American would receive. This equals $3,071 per person.
This amount would actually do something for the economy. Much more than the $300 or $600 received earlier. But I guess it is very American that when we get an inch, we want a mile.
deborah,
$700,000,000,000.00 divided by 305,275,800 is? $2,293 maybe? I cannot tell you any more than that.
This thought of a real stimulus not just to main street but to the citizenry have been weighing heavy on my mind… In truth I could not compute the amount that we each would received but I could clearly see, that subdividing the monies to the citizenry will better serve us from a bottom up approach than further trusting the top down approach in which the congress and senators propose.
I was supprise to see that a few others are/were on the same tract regarding how to eradicate this economic crisis. As a person of African desent,a
college graduate and one who have not ever been able to engage the system with capital and credit necessary to achieve my aspiration for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To conclude, It should be clear that via a top down approach lacking transparancies, will only reuin the world as we know it. resu;ting, if the blind lead the blind they both will fall in the ditch. By the way, I hope this is what BaracK_O have in mind as it relates to spreading the wealth around.