register |  login
› LAKEWOOD
Loading Ad
Visit Other Hubs:
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Tower
Blog
Blog Entry 313 of 425 View from the middle or thereabouts.
A political pundit said most of us live life between the 40 yard lines. I'm one of them. Sometimes I'm right of center, sometimes the other way around.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~BrianBlog

The $700 Billion Question.
Contributed by: Brian Olson   on 9/21/2008

Maybe it's just me but I have a lot of things I don't understand about this whole bailout deal.

First Fannie and Freddie. Lehman Bros in a way then AIG. Inever even heard of AIG until this week, but apparently it's an insurance company that is so huge, life as we know it would end if it went under.

Didn't anyone see this coming? I thought Sarbanes-Oxeley was supposed to make for honest accounting.

As near as I can figure it out, things started going south when a bank lent money to someone to buy a house. The problem was the people who bought the house should never have been lent the money in the first place. They had poor credit and there was no way they could make the payments.

No worries for the bank. They sold the mortgage to Fannie or Freddie. Soon more and more banks lent more and more money for houses to people who also couldn't afford to pay for them.

Fannie and Freddie kept on buying up the bad debt.

Now this is where it get complicated. Fannie and Freddie worked with various brokerage houses to package these bad loans, turn them into "Financial Instruments" and sell them as investments.

The whole house of cards came tumbling down and the government also doing business as you and me came up with $700 billion of our money to bail these folks out.

By the way, the leaders of these outfits all made million and millions of dollars a year. They flew around the country in private jets and continue to live the good life.

Like most of you, we never bought a house we couldn't afford to pay for. We pay our bills on time and live within our means. Now we have to pay for people who did just the opposite.

So, here are questions and suggestions:

What's our ROI? (Return on Investment)

Have the corporate jets been grounded, or even better, being sold on eBay to recoup some money?

What happens to the executives involved in creating this mess?

Is anyone looking out for us?

When did we become a Socialist Country? We're nationalizing companies for pete's sake?

I'd feel better if some folks like Warren Buffet, Jack Welch and the like could be part of a commission to oversee all this.

Because right now, the people in charge couldn't make it past the first round of "ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?"



SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above blog



Talk Back : submit comments to the blog

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Brian Olson

Highlands Ranch , CO

Brian Olson has posted 425 blog entries and 21 comments since joining on 11/30/2007. Brian Olson 's average blog rating is 4.72.
SAVE AND SHARE THIS BLOG ENTRY
BLOG ENTRY RSS FEEDS
BLOG LIST
WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?
Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is  register,  then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyonewhat events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

Loading Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

This YourHub.com community is produced by The Denver Newspaper Agency
Web Development and Channel Analytics provided by Indigio

terms of use //  privacy policy
the staff //  advertise //  help & faq
buy photos