Here is my three point plan to solve the current financial crisis:
- Offer tax cuts to people who buy houses in the next six month
- Offer tax cuts to financial companies that offer credit in the next six months
- Offer temporary immunity from recourse to people who default on their mortgages (or renegotiate it to reflect the current market value of their home)
I have written about my reasoning behind this plan and hope to spark a discussion about it on e-thepeople.org.
3. et cetera democracy, Election 08, follow up, society
- If you are ‘too big to fail,’ you are ‘too big to go unregulated.’
- The bailout plans being discussed now are all *terrible*
- they reward companies that were recklessly over-leveraged
- they reward homeowners who were recklessly over-leveraged
- they penalize any people or companies that did not participate in the reckless borrow & spend tactics
- they substitute lack of accountability in the private sector for lack of accountability in the public sector
- Short sellers provide accountability to companies - they aren’t the problem, they are part of the solution
- As we focus on government bailouts, we are missing the fact that Bank of America’s has put US tax payers on the hook (through FDIC insurance) for a catastrophe in Merrill Lynch’s portfolio
- This bailout is going to pale in comparison to what happens when there is a run on the mutual funds. More on this later, but look up “embedded tax liability” and you’ll get a peek at what will almost certainly happen as baby boomers reverse the trend from net contributions to net disbursements in mutual funds
- To all those who repeat “focus on asset allocation because markets always go up in the long run”: don’t forget that the “long run” has meant 25 years in at least one case in our history
- Neither Obama nor McCain or any other political leader has a clue what do right now
Unfortunately, I do not have a solution to these incredible problems. I do believe that acknowledging these problems sooner rather than later is critical in containing the damage of twenty+ years of living beyond our means as a country.
Have a good day!!
2. politics, 3. et cetera Election 08, society
…but the message is the same.” Weird and oddly catchy.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8[/youtube]
3. et cetera society, videos