Whose Money Is It?

The Republicans rode in on their white horses, at the last minute, and saved the day. Everybody cheer! Pats on the back to everyone for a job well done! Hip, hip, hooray!

The party atmosphere in the White House is almost palpable. Champagne corks are flying, party favors are passed out at the door. While that address on Pennsylvania Avenue celebrates its heroic victory of snatching Wall Street investors from the jaws of almost certain doom, taxpayers are footing the bill, again. Ex-homeowners are setting up new residences in tent cities across the country adding to the already shameful number of homeless right here in the richest and most affluent country in the world.

Sure, bailing out these large financial institutions was the most expedient method to prevent an even deeper recession, which, by the way, was created by these very same people, but how about sending some help to those people whose dreams of owning their own home were preyed upon by unethical money lenders whose own personal goals were to sell as many loans as possible.

By extending credit to questionable, borderline, at-risk individuals whose qualifications were based on some pretty creative credit score criteria, these short-sighted, greedy mortgage lenders knew these loans would probably never be able to be repaid and therefore they became one of the instruments that brought this economy to its knees. They were paid their salaries so they didn’t care if the loans would be paid or not. After all, to their irresponsible way of thinking, it wasn’t their money.

The result of the devastating wave of foreclosures will be felt for years to come in neighborhoods across this country, with the potential to affect entire cities. But, hey, it wasn’t their money so why should mortgage lenders care. They think their responsibility began and ended on the dotted line.

Lenders and servicers who hold those loans need to now step up and restructure high-risk loans, that they were responsible for, into lower-rate mortgages to help people stay in their homes in order to continue to be productive in this economy instead of a drain on it. It is their moral responsibility.

Here’s a message for anyone who deals with money: any government bailout comes out of our taxes and takes money away from other necessary projects. Projects we all benefit from, so, yes it is your money too. These narrow-minded mortgage lenders who wrought such havoc on our society will pay for their bad decisions, right along with the rest of us.

They share the blame for this faltering economy with those heroic rescuing Republicans on their white horses who saw to it that the wealthy don’t pay as much tax as the rest of us. In pushing corporate welfare they have upset a very basic tenet of a capitalist economy: there has to exist a buyer and a producer. When the buyer is drained of all financial ability to buy then the system falls apart. Very simple explanation, true, but this is what is happening. This republican government, in its zeal to do everything in its power to shift as much financial wealth as possible to the wealthiest among us, has, without going into an actual depression, created the largest welfare-dependent group of people in U.S. history.

The very backbone of this economy is being bled dry. America cannot afford to go deeper into debt. Americans cannot afford to support the fiscal irresponsible republican sacred cow of throwing money at a problem until it goes away. Corporate America has unashamedly raided pension plans to cover their leaders bad financial decisions, the federal government has tapped the Social Security system to cover short falls from a vast array of financial mis-management. An illegal war has drained billions of dollars away from needed infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, etc that still need to be paid for. The health and welfare of the American populace is being pushed aside to protect the rich from the after effects of their own lack of financial responsibility.

While the CEO’s and politicians responsible for this economic misery walk away, counting their financial spoils, millions of American taxpayers will be saddled with this bailout for years to come.

While politicians are enriched by corporate America’s lobbyists and CEO’s savor their sweetheart golden parachute deals the American taxpayer struggles to pay the ever increasing costs for the very basic needs of survival that these same politicians and CEO’s will never have to struggle for.

As long as our political leaders are more concerned with ensuring a profit for corporate America than for the public welfare of the working class whose hard work and purchasing power are instrumental in creating that profit, taxpayers will never get a break.

So, in the end, the venerable and steadfast hard working American taxpayer once again has his pockets ripped open by the unethically greedy and immorally bloodied hands of this administration in order to scrape out the last remaining nickel to cover their mistakes and feed the insatiable greed of corporate America.

Once again I ask, Whose money is it?