Forbes Forum

Lissa is a tree-hugger? More like stump-hugger--it is a little late to save that tree. Actually, I was just looking for a picture to post, since I have not posted for some time.

What I really want to talk about is the absolute craziness I hear from media, current and future government officials about the economy. This morning everybody was crying about the fact that borrowers are having a hard time finding somebody to lend them money. Listen--this is not a mystery. The federal reserve lowered the prime rate to something like 1%. Inflation rate is over 3%. Would YOU loan money at 1% and lose 2% on your money? This "downturn" was supposedly caused by too many loans to too many people who cannot make their housing payments--people who were hoping to make money on a quick buy-sell in a rising housing price market. So now those loans are not worth anything (besides they have been bundled, cut, bundled and cut so nobody knows who actually owns the loan on a particular house anyway). So the "solution" is for the government (that really means taxpayers, remember), to "buy up" those horrible loans? With what money?--the REAL answer to this last question is that the government is simply making money out of thin air. The plan is to inflate our currency--so the value of each dollar will drop. It is obvious to me that inflating the currency is the OPPOSITE of what should be done. We were told that the $700 BILLION "bailout package" was necessary and it HAD to be passed immediately. HOGWASH. Now we are told by the very same people that $700 Billion is not enough, the plan they sold to Congress will not work, so they will not be doing that, but now a small handful of appointed people have billions of dollars to hand out to whomever they wish all in the name of emergency assistance. Insane. Simply insane.