This money should have been better spent on getting people back to work.

As other commentators have noted though, this bailout only reinforces the notion that there are no consequences to bad decisions. For an administration who wants personal responsibility, their words ring hallow compared to their actions.

This does nothing to address the underlying cause of this mess: mortgages with balloon payment clauses, mortgage deductability (which studies have recommended to be abloished but Congress has swept those same studies under the carpet), unsustainable land use policies, lax regulation over mortgage brokering, the fact that the lender in most states have no personal recourse against the borrower personally for the difference between loan amount and foreclosure price etc. etc.

They may have done better eliminating the exotic mortgages with back-end balloon payments and making the lenders amortizate by resetting the amortization to 20 years from today then giving a 6 month grace period to borrowers to pay the true cost of the mortgage at reasonable rates. Since the U.S. government basically owns all the banks now anyways, they are really the lenders anyhow.

…but I guess this bailout scores more political points and politics trumps all.

I think they just want to control where the money is going and that is actually helps people in need.

I almost want to just say screw them all (irresponsible homeowners and companies). They weren’t responsible, and now they should pay the price. People who have been fiscally responsible are basically paying for other people’s mistakes, which seems like a punishment for being responsible. Big corporations are barely surviving and are still paying big bonuses to the corporate level employees who didn’t know what they were doing and have run their companies into the ground while cashing enormous pay cheques. In a free market, companies that do poorly are supposed to fail *cough*GM*cough*. You can’t just keep bailing out the losers… they are losers for a reason.

In the end though, I am assuming the bailout was necessary to keep the system alive, but for all I know we would have been better off without it.

I think Americans who invented capitalism (which I thank them everyday for – I’m self-employed, working from home & making 50K/yr) need to review their systems as a whole.
Their banking system went down the tube because of greed; the system in place in Canada gives us the latitude we need to make sure we can make a monthly payment that doesn’t change, but also at a rate that is regulated, (ex: 100K mortgage at 5.49% on a 5 year fixed term amortized over 25 yrs).

When I was hearing Bush in the past talk about socialism and it’s drawbacks and pitfalls, it made me laugh because it just reaffirmed what I knew; this guy is afraid of what he doesn’t know, listens to people who know even less and therefor it gave him the right to bash it out…

Obama seems to have the right attitude; whatever or however its called, lets try it; if it works, then keep it but if it doesn’t, next…

One last note, I remember Bush having said that Canadians health system currently in place make it easy to have to wait several months to have surgery; well guess what bud, it might be the case in some instances but at least I won’t have a heart attack when I get out of the hospital and see the bill I’m left to pay since my greedy insurance company has finally decided NOT to pay it even after it told me it would…

Like the executives, should thes folk who went into the game with their eyes open, and even played the game to its’ fullest, also be excluded from the bailout? They are now in the position they planned to be!

DAvid

Politically, I don’t think it was a good move – I think most Americans absolutely hate it and $75 bills is only a small part of the entire stimulus package.