My bailout plan
Posted: September 29, 2008, 1:00 am Eastern
Congress is beginning debate on a $700 billion plan for U.S. taxpayers to bail out banks, mortgage companies and investment firms that made bad loans to unqualified consumers, including illegal aliens, and became insolvent as a result.
Officials say this plan is designed to protect us from further harm and to prop up the teetering economic system the government has created.
I have a better idea.
Let's not put more money into the hands of those who created the problem. Let's put the money into the hands of the people who were victimized. Why should the victims pay twice and the victimizers get off scot-free?
Here's my plan:
1. Those who bled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dry by lying about the government-created mortgage companies' real worth so they could secure billions in personal bonuses should make restitution. They should be forbidden from ever holding any government job or position in the financial world for the rest of their lives.
2. Anyone who made more than $1 million a year in the other failed banks and institutions should be forced to contribute all their income in excess of $1 million a year to my bailout program.
3. The chairmen of the Senate and House banking oversight committees should be forced to resign in disgrace from their positions.
4. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who literally started the first bank run in California with his irresponsible public statements, should be forced to resign from the Senate.
5. All candidates for federal political office who received contributions from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or any executives of those institutions, or the other failed banking, mortgage and investment firms, should be required to give the money to the bailout fund.
6. Since the Bush administration is trying to sell the idea that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually hold assets of greater value than the cost of their proposed bailout, I suggest they auction those institutions off to the highest private bidders.
7. Instead of paying $700 billion to prop up the institutions that created the mess, I propose $700 billion be paid directly to those victimized by the scandal – the American people – in the form of a tax cut. This would stimulate the economy and help the country grow its way out of this crisis.
I'm sure this plan has a few holes in it. That's because I made it up in about 15 minutes.
But I'm also certain it is far better than any official plan being floated in Washington today.
So, I'm asking you to get on board. Make amendments if you like. But tell those scoundrels in Washington stop picking your pocket and your children's pockets with this bailout of the banking class.
If my business goes belly up because of bad decisions I make in running it, no one is going to bail me out. I fail to see why businesses thousands of times bigger than mine should face no risk and, in effect, be insured against mistakes and bad judgment by the taxpayers of the United States.
This is not the way the free market works.
What is at stake in this bailout scheme is not just amounts of money few of us can even imagine. What is at stake is not just massive tax increases in the future. What is at stake is not just rewarding criminals and shysters. What is at stake is whether America will protect the last vestiges of a free enterprise system for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
No more quick fixes that, in fact, cost us far more in the long run.
No more cover-ups of wrongdoing.
No more rewarding the worst kind of fiscal irresponsibility.
Support the Farah plan.
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