Spring Break
Obama's bailout is financial insanity
Caleb Thornton
Issue date: 2/11/09 Section: Opinion
The day after Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S., I told myself that even though I was not happy about it, I would still give the new president a chance. After all, he is my president and his success or failure would mean success or failure for us all.
It's unfortunate then, that in his first test as president, Barack Obama failed.
Obviously, when the American people went to the polls on Nov. 4, they voted for change, but I'm not sure that they knew just exactly what kind of "change" they were getting themselves into.
I mean, can we all just stop one second and take a look around at just what exactly is going on here?
Congress is poised to pass a massive spending bill near the $800 billion mark, while Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner -- you know, the guy who didn't pay his personal income tax and has now been appointed to single-handedly rescue our financial system -- announced that the Fed will commit more than $1 trillion to do just that, after which the stock markets promptly plummeted.
As the Associated Press reported, all told this financial bailout could cost up to $3 trillion of public and private funds.
$3 trillion -- are you kidding me?
Listen, I don't want a depression any more than the next guy. I'm a senior in college, am this close to graduating, and the prospects for a nice, cushy, thank-God-I'm-making-real-money kind of job are looking bleak, not to mention the loans that are going to come due (unless I'm next in line for a bailout).
But my fellow students, this is not the way.
Just follow simple logic for one minute here.
If I want to buy a new Mustang, but I simply do not have the money lying around to do so, I will have to take out a loan and pay the money back later, with interest.
In the same respect, the government does not have $3 trillion that it can simply take out of its budget, and put to rescuing the economy. So how can it pay for such a program? It will have to borrow the money, which would logically follow that we, the taxpayer -- even more specifically our generation -- will have to pay it back someday with interest, only in this case it will be to the tune of $3 trillion.
It's unfortunate then, that in his first test as president, Barack Obama failed.
Obviously, when the American people went to the polls on Nov. 4, they voted for change, but I'm not sure that they knew just exactly what kind of "change" they were getting themselves into.
I mean, can we all just stop one second and take a look around at just what exactly is going on here?
Congress is poised to pass a massive spending bill near the $800 billion mark, while Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner -- you know, the guy who didn't pay his personal income tax and has now been appointed to single-handedly rescue our financial system -- announced that the Fed will commit more than $1 trillion to do just that, after which the stock markets promptly plummeted.
As the Associated Press reported, all told this financial bailout could cost up to $3 trillion of public and private funds.
$3 trillion -- are you kidding me?
Listen, I don't want a depression any more than the next guy. I'm a senior in college, am this close to graduating, and the prospects for a nice, cushy, thank-God-I'm-making-real-money kind of job are looking bleak, not to mention the loans that are going to come due (unless I'm next in line for a bailout).
But my fellow students, this is not the way.
Just follow simple logic for one minute here.
If I want to buy a new Mustang, but I simply do not have the money lying around to do so, I will have to take out a loan and pay the money back later, with interest.
In the same respect, the government does not have $3 trillion that it can simply take out of its budget, and put to rescuing the economy. So how can it pay for such a program? It will have to borrow the money, which would logically follow that we, the taxpayer -- even more specifically our generation -- will have to pay it back someday with interest, only in this case it will be to the tune of $3 trillion.
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