Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Remember how “the bailout has to pass, otherwise the economy will fall apart”? Well, it passed and the economy is collapsing. Our politicians just don’t get it, we will have a recession regardless of how much money they waste while pretending to “do something”.

On Friday, for the 3 hours the market was open after the bailout passed, the DOW lost 484 points ( ~$600 billion). Today, we’re down 567 points so far (~$700 billion).

Wasn’t the bailout supposed to prevent this?

I guess not; so that $700 billion revolving credit account for the Treasury to buy worthless assets and the $150 billion in pork did nothing to settle the markets.

And today The Guardian reported this:

Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government’s $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come.

‘There is a growing feeling that banks … might instead decide to tough it out,’ said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager.

Wait a second. We were told that the bailout had to happen immediately since the banks need the money now.

But the banks are saying, “Well… I don’t know. We might participate in the program or not. We’re not sure. We’ll get back to you. We might just tough it out.”

So in reality, there was no urgency. The banks didn’t need this, they aren’t even sure they will take it. They think they can just “tough it out”.

In the end, we were lied to by our politicians. And despite 90% of the American people being against it, our politicians thought they were smarter than the rest of us “common folk”. Well, I guess they were wrong.

The bailout isn’t stopping the economy from collapsing and the banks don’t even want to participate. So in the end, it’s just a collosal waste of our money.