Stupid is as Stupid Does

I've been reading about the current mortgage meltdown and the subsequent crisis in the world of credit and I am sorely vexed.

If I get it right, unscrupulous lenders offered money to unqualified borrowers so they could buy homes that they couldn't otherwise afford. The lenders then acted like deli countermen and sliced up the mortgage packages into little tiny bits of debt that were purchased by investors hoping to make a big gain when the mortgages reset.

It was a party where everyone was drinking the easy credit Kool Aid.

So now the borrowers who couldn't afford it can't, and the lenders who shouldn't have lent are broke, and the investors are holding worthless paper. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?!

So all the big boys on Wall Street with the slicked-back hair, high priced apartments, and fancy whores are quivering in fear just like the people who are losing their houses. It's interesting to see those two groups huddled together holding out tin cups over at the Treasury

And now the federal government is going to throw a cash lifeline to all of them.

The argument for doing this is the credit markets are now so leery of handing out cash to borrowers that they are zipping their pockets. No lending means no business expansion. No business expansion means recession. And since this is an election year the Republicans can't allow that to happen, because how would Mr. McCain defend Republican government policies which cause people get tossed out of their homes? People on the street makes for good television for the Democrats. Then again, if the administration did nothing, the Democrats would point to all of those poor people on the street and say, "Look at what those heartless Republicans did to you!"

The truth is that the markets have to be stabilized, despite all the right-wing Republican bovine by-product you hear at all other times about getting rid of government intervention. The right-wingers want their investment dollars protected and it's your money they want to accomplish that goal.

Meanwhile, the people who, driven by their own greed and stupidity, borrowed more than they could ever afford, because they thought they would be able to make their fortune from their houses, will be bailed out too.

And so the money for this financial boondoggle will come from the pockets of all the hardworking Joes and Janes who saw through the scams and who didn't get caught up in the cycle of greed and stupidity.

Does this make you feel better?

Perhaps the only good that might come out of this debacle is the imposition of the same regulation and oversight on these investment houses as currently exists for banks. If they want to take government money, they have to accept the regulations that go with it.