Shame on the bailers!

The Super Bailout

The legislature is moving toward a 700 billion dollar bailout of the mortgage business. Part of the fable attached to it is that eventually we will get the money back. I would question this project even if I thought the purest of motives was behind it. But I have a greater concern. It is simple. Every time there is money involved, we also find a host of people who are more than willing to help themselves to it.

For example, benefit concerts were held for those who had lost loved ones in the 9/11 disaster. Much of that money simply disappeared. Very little of it made it to the people who were supposed to be helped. Entrepreneurs quickly saw an opportunity to make a quick buck and did so.

Every week we get calls from veterans organizations that call upon us to help veterans. It is a known fact that these telemarketing programs allow very little of the money they take in to get to the people for whom it is intended.

A young college girl in a skimpy outfit showed up at my door on Saturday wanting to tell me about how she was going to win a trip to Ireland and $5000.00 to go to school on. It all depended on collecting the necessary points. In a sultry voice, she said to me, "Would you like to know how I make points?" I told her I wasn't interested and she looked like I had just broken her heart. But I am familiar with this scam as well. Young people are conned into believing that they will raise big bucks and take great trips based upon the number of magazines they sell. But no one ever wins. Eventually this girl along with many others are going to be broken hearted because they were taken in.

In the September 10, 2008 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle an article discussing the waste by FEMA in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina reported:

"A report by the Homeland Security Department's office of inspector general, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, is the latest to detail mismanagement in the multibillion-dollar Katrina hurricane recovery effort, which investigators have said wasted at least $1 billion.

The review examined temporary housing contracts awarded without competition to Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Group Inc., CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. and Fluor Corp. in the days immediately before and after the August 2005 storm that smashed into the U.S. Gulf Coast.

It found that FEMA wasted at least $45.9 million on the four contracts that together were initially worth $400 million. FEMA subsequently raised the total amounts for the four contracts twice, both times without competition, to $2 billion and then $3 billion."

Again, there were people more than willing to steal from the U. S. Government and most likely will go totally unpunished for the theft. These were people who took advantage of a disaster and pocketed the profits while the people who needed help were left low and wet (in contrast to "high and dry").

Now the government wants to come up with $700,000,000,000 to bail out the mortgage companies who foolishly issued mortgages for inflated loans that the recipients had little or no hope of repaying. For a while I was receiving from reputable lenders offers of $250,000-500,000 loans. If I paid my entire salary on such loans I could not keep up with the payments. Why would any business in its right mind (or left one for that matter) make such outrageous offers to people? Now they want the government to bail them out.

Seven hundred billion dollars offers unbelievable sums to those who are willing to steal under any circumstances. My humble prognosis is that if that money is made available at least one-half of it will be lost to corrupt politicians and bankers. Congress will call for hearings. There will be the traditional browbeating, but when the day comes to an end, a lot of people are going to be a great deal richer at the expense of my children and grand children.

This is a project to help the rich and famous, not the poor, the down and out, and the people who are going to lose their homes this year.