Standing Up for Judas

So I said I'd write this, and here I am, writing it.  This is my post about the financial "difficulties" the country is going through right now (oh, and if it seems a bit...off to you, it's because I'm dead tired, but thought it rather important to write this).  Anyhoo....the post!

I am not an economist.  I have never studied economics.  I have about as much grasp of this subject as Stephen Colbert, and, it seems, most other people in the world.  (Well, now my appeal to ethos is shot to hell..., let's try logos...)  That said, I believe that the government bailout of banks is wrong for the following reasons:

1. These banks are for-profit entities, not owned by the government, and with an obligation to their shareholders only.  We should not bail out private companies with public funds, unless we are actually going to take over that company and make all of its profits government income which can be turned into useful things such as roads and healthcare, which everyone can use, rather than cars and laptops, which benefit individuals.

2. It's these companies' own bloody faults that they lent to people the knew couldn't make their payments if the housing market took even a slight down turn.  Let them deal with the consequences of their actions.  I know it sounds juvenile, but I am a legal juvenile so suck it up.  It also makes the most sense, if you ask me.  You break something, you deal with it.

3. (Not technically a reason for not bailing out banks, just a gripe I have with the whole thing) Executives of these companies should not get bonuses for being fired for sending the country into an economic nose dive.

4. It has been proposed that there will be no oversight on this matter.  Every single government agency that has ever done anything like this has had oversight.  It is crazy and counter to the ideals of the Constitution not to have oversight.

5. (Lastly, and most importantly) We are bailing out the wrong people!  The people who will suffer from this are not the CEOs of AIG and Lehman Brothers, they are the tax-paying citizens of the United States who took on a mortgage that they couldn't handle, and now find themselves over the flames because these banks that lent to them didn't tell them "Uhhh, sir, we're going to make less money off you, but we'd like to inform you that you actually can't afford this loan.  Perhaps I can suggest another, more suitable one?"

Oh, and this also gives us a nice push in the direction labeled "fascism".  As if we didn't need it.

"173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one." - Thomas Jefferson