Economic update

Wow - I worked in the office today and the sentiment against bailing out Wall Street is strong.

If only we could know the right way to turn.

Respected economists are on both sides of the fence. Nobody knows which is worse - to live with the results of no bailout, or to put a lot of money in the hands of the corporations who caused the problem in the first place.

I guess its a risk either way.
What many people are concerned about is that the behavior that caused the problem is going to continue unabated.
But, the behavior that caused the problem can't be legislated, right?
Greed, instant gratification. What are you gonna do about that? Punish people for being greedy? Punish people for not paying attention to loan documents or believing the lies they wee told?
I'm among the people who don't have a great deal of debt to speak of. I rent instead of owning, I owe on my car for another year, but zero percent interest rate, and I don't have any credit cared or tuition debt. I don't have unlimited savings. But, I have some flexibility. I won't be in trouble in the first month or so.

But, there are a lot of people who have debt and don't get paid too much and would be in trouble fairly quickly if jobs are affected. Should those people be sacrificed just so we can punish Wall Street?

And I think that scenario might apply whether we go ahead with the bailout or if we don't.

Maybe, if the Congress continues to take a long time figuring something out, then we'll have an answer anyway.

On the political side, it does seem weird that the Democrats are siding with Paulson/Bush and the people (what percentage of all people I wonder?) are against the idea of a bailout.

My impression is that most people don't want to bailout Wall Street and they're willing to live with the consequences.
I don't believe them. I think, once the consequences become obvious (assuming there are consequences) they'd complain and rail against the government who got us into this mess (job losses)

Truthfully, even if we give the money, they'll complain and rail against the government that got them into that mess too (more taxes).

We need to be clear about what's an immediate crisis to be solved, and what we can change once the immediate crisis has been averted. I don't think people are bringing that up enough.

Since I was in the office today I wasn't able to stay as up to date on the dealings of the day as I did earlier this week.