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Beckster
Senior Member
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Posted: 7 September 2008 05:25 pm |
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| Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac takeover this morning. Real estate market just keeps sliding, job reports down, huge spending on the war...I have a bad feeling. My family doing ok fortunately but I worry about the world my children are inheriting. What do you all think?
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CrimsonAnimus
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 7 September 2008 08:11 pm |
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I don't like where it's headed, either.
McCain made a comment along the lines of, "To hear people talk, you would think we were in a Great Depression." Well, the economy is worse than it has been in a long time, and if it doesn't get under control, we could be heading there.
I am unbelievably fortunate because of the job that I have now, but I've made about 1/3 of it for most of my life, and I can't imagine supporting a family on that, even if I had 2 jobs.
One of the problems with a "land of opportunity" is that it gives a little too big of a reward to those in the upper middle class and high class, while pretty much saying to the majority of Americans, "Well, you're just not working as hard, apparantly, so tough luck for you." I don't like that philosophy. 
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cportwine
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 13 September 2008 04:38 pm |
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I don't like where it is headed at all. I really think something is going to have to change real soon.
My husband and I struggle with the gas and food prices now. We use to get by pretty good. Now everything extra goes in the gas tank or to the grocery store. Makes it hard to accomplish anything else that we would like to do. Like save for the kiddies college, repairs to the house, that kind of thing. It's hard to do thoses things without any extra cash flow.
I think the politicians are fooling themselves if they think there is nothing wrong with paying almost 4 bucks a gallon for gas, without increasing wages, how on earth are people going to make it.
Last edited on 13 September 2008 04:39 pm by cportwine
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DaniMae1
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 15 September 2008 10:56 am |
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CrimsonAnimus wrote: I don't like where it's headed, either..
One of the problems with a "land of opportunity" is that it gives a little too big of a reward to those in the upper middle class and high class, while pretty much saying to the majority of Americans, "Well, you're just not working as hard, apparantly, so tough luck for you." I don't like that philosophy.
This is not always true. We are in the middle close to the upper middle and the more we make the more they take. What are we rewarded with? We don't recieve the earned income credit. We don't get the tax breaks that the lower gets. My husband works his tail off at a very physically demanding job and the only rewards we get are higher taxes. Some people AREN'T working as hard. We lived on minimum wages about 13 years ago and worked our way out of it. No one needs to STAY in a lower income situation.
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christyandmuddy
New Member
| Joined: | 5 May 2008 |
| Location: | Florida USA |
| Posts: | 248 |
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Posted: 15 September 2008 02:10 pm |
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DaniMae1 wrote: No one needs to STAY in a lower income situation.
I don't agree. It isn't realistic to think that every person has the skills and opportunities to "climb the ladder" so to speak. Everybody is constrained by their life circumstances and sometimes those constraints don't permit them to move upward. Besides, with the rich continuing to get richer, the poor continuing to get poorer and the middle class in the process of being wiped out, the upward mobility that made the U.S. one of the greatest countries on earth is starting to disappear. The middle class is a necessary rung in the ladder of upward mobility and when we ship all our middle class jobs overseas, we lose that ability to climb.
I agree that there are people who don't work hard and who won't better their position in life because of that. But that is certainly not the case for everyone who finds themself in a low-paying job.
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mollymoo24
Distinguished Member
| Joined: | 30 December 2007 |
| Location: | Chicago, USA |
| Posts: | 6302 |
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Posted: 17 September 2008 10:41 pm |
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I keep watching my 401K dive and am really disgusted because we lose the money but the govt will come in and save Freddie and Fannie and AIG - except its not the govt that is paying, it is you and me and every working American oh and yeah our kids and their kids because there is no hope that we will be leaving a debt free nation to our kids. We're screwed.
But if you are a CEO, you're golden. Not a thing to worry about.
These SOB's ought to be in jail.
JHMO.
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cportwine
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 18 September 2008 12:09 am |
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mollymoo24 wrote: I keep watching my 401K dive and am really disgusted because we lose the money but the govt will come in and save Freddie and Fannie and AIG - except its not the govt that is paying, it is you and me and every working American oh and yeah our kids and their kids because there is no hope that we will be leaving a debt free nation to our kids. We're screwed.
But if you are a CEO, you're golden. Not a thing to worry about.
These SOB's ought to be in jail.
JHMO.
Just had to say....LIKE YOUR WAY OF THINKING... 
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DaniMae1
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 18 September 2008 11:21 am |
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I agree with the comments about the government bailouts. Ridiculous! Why are those guys getting rewarded for running a company into the ground?! If I don't do my job right I certainly won't be rewarded for it! So annoying! 
And it isn't even a function of government to use our money to bail out these guys! This is crazy. I can't stand politcians. For the most part anyhow. I don't like any of them. They're messed up on both sides.
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Beckster
Senior Member
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Posted: 18 September 2008 11:28 pm |
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Either way we taxpayers will pay. If Fannie and Freddie went down it would have had a domino effect on the rest of the economy. We wouldn't be able to borrow any money. The housing market would actually get even worse. Home values would crash so bad that even people who put 20% or more down on their homes would have negative equity. People would lose jobs. The dollar would be in the toilet, our credit rating as a nation would crash, there would be no tax revenue because unemployment would be in double digits. I agree that we need to hold the CEOs and responsible parties accountable and make it hurt for them. But somehow we need to keep these enormous financial institutions from completely failing.
By the way, we can all forget about improving healthcare, there won't be any money left.
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christyandmuddy
New Member
| Joined: | 5 May 2008 |
| Location: | Florida USA |
| Posts: | 248 |
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Posted: 19 September 2008 03:27 pm |
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| Big corporations truly have run away with the reins of this country.
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sweet kisses
Senior Member
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Posted: 30 September 2008 11:54 pm |
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I agree with both Beckster and Mollymoo. On the one hand, Beckster is entirely correct about the side-effects of bailing out AIG and such. The economy would only get much worse if the government (or more specifically, WE) don't do anything to try to save it. On the other hand, I think the politicians have skewed the definition of a corportation (which is what these companies are).
A corporation is a separate entity from any of the stock-holders or principals (executives running the company). According to my economics text book: "the corporation has a life independent of its owners and its officers"-- Meaning that bailing out the corporation should mean that and only that. It should not have anything to do with bailing out the executives. Unfortunately, when the government is bailing out the corporations, they are also bailing out the executives. What should happen is the corporation needs to be bailed out, to save the economy from complete meltdown. The executives should be thrown in jail for thievery and malpractice.
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sweet kisses
Senior Member
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Posted: 30 September 2008 11:58 pm |
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BTW, I was watching Jim Cramer last night after the House rejected the bailout bill. You should have seen him. I think its the first time I've ever seen Jim Cramer something close to depressed. He was really trying to keep the spark but....You know things are bad when even Cramer's having trouble keeping upbeat about the economy.
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Beckster
Senior Member
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Posted: 1 October 2008 12:56 am |
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I'm in total agreement about the scumbag execs. Let's just be honest. People are basically selfish, and given the opportunity, they'll take, take, take at every opportunity. Which is why I have serious concerns about pretty much handing the Treasury Sec. $700billion. You know the adage. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I'm (hopefully) at the nadir of my political cynicism.
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Krinkala
Member
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Posted: 1 October 2008 03:31 am |
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Here's a better plan. Let's take the 700 Billion dollar bailout to Wall Street and give that money directly to the adult U.S. citizens that make less than $1 million a year. Let's say that number is 200,000. If you divide 700 Billion by 200,000 that is $3.5 million dollars per qualified citizen. Let's say that after taxes it came out to $2 million.
If we had $2 million dollars a piece, we could take care of the economy ourselves, thank you very much! We could pay off mortgages, or buy a first home, start the businesses that we weren't able to get loans for, invest, buy new American cars, buy our own health care plans, take care of deferred dental and health care, and put our kids through school. And at the same time, we, the average guy, the people from Main Street, would be rescuing the economy.
Oh, and while we're at it, we could afford to hire lawyers to put the Wall Street criminals behind bars where they belong!
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mollymoo24
Distinguished Member
| Joined: | 30 December 2007 |
| Location: | Chicago, USA |
| Posts: | 6302 |
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Posted: 2 October 2008 01:34 am |
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Krinkala, I think there are more than 200,000 individual adults in the U.S. who make less than $1M per year. Maybe you mean 200 million. These numbers are so large its easy to drop a few 000's.
$700,000,000,000 divided by 200,000,000 = $3,500 each.
I did the same thing myself at first. I still would rather see a main-street versus wall-street bailout plan. Unfortunately the numbers are just huge.
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Beckster
Senior Member
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Posted: 2 October 2008 01:58 am |
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| Also, that doesn't solve the problem of the frozen credit markets.
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Krinkala
Member
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Posted: 2 October 2008 03:10 am |
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Oh, you are right. I must have left off a few digits from the spreadsheet. 3500 each would not solve the problem.
Well, bailing out rich people and institutions who took risks isn't palatable to the average voter. So how they are going to sell this bailout to the voters is to try to make us see how it will hurt the average guy. So today, all the media is putting out stories about how this will effect credit, how jobs will be lost and so forth.
I think they think we don't know all this. Some of us know it and still want those taking the risks to take the frontal hit. Some people have been living very high for a very long time and have been very unconcerned about the rest of us. A lot of us don't have so far to fall as the greedy people who got us into this mess. We know how to go through hard times. It doesn't frighten me. I'd like to see investigations and prosecutions and let the chips fall where they may.
I have a lot of faith that the people of this country can turn anything around given a fair shake.
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OnceUpon-A-ThinGirl
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 2 October 2008 03:25 am |
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| Why not use that money to cut costs on American made products, so more American's buy things made in the USA? Why not pay off American debt in foreign countries? The American dollar has gone down in value in the worldwide market considerably!
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