You might have heard that the Federal Government bailed out the huge insurance company AIG to the tune of $85 billion dollars.
Ain’t that a trip? Let’s compare this to what happens when you owe somebody. If you owe a cell phone company, let’s say $100, you will be hounded at your home and work. They may even call your girlfriend and your mama to find you and get their money. If you try to work out any payment plan, more than likely, the robotic so-called human being on the other end of the phone will accuse you of being morally inferior and incapable of handling your responsibilities. You may even be threatened with legal action. Bailout? If you’ve been spending your cell phone money on sneakers or shoes or ringtones or eating out, you won’t be able to borrow $85 to get that phone back on.
Now compare this to what’s happening on Wall Street lately. To make what is a very complicated situation simple, THINGS ARE GOING TO HELL. Well, actually, so much of what’s going on is difficult for anyone without an Ivy League PhD in economics to understand, but given what the media has been reporting lately, that “hell” statement is pretty accurate. Terms like “The Great Depression” are being thrown around. For those of you who’s grandparents weren’t even born back in 1929 when the stock market crashed, let’s keep it real simple for you. EVERYONE WAS BROKE. I’m talking waiting on bread lines for food, rich dudes going from millionaires to penniless overnight and jumping out of windows, that kind of thing.
Basically, what’s going on is that big business with help from the eight years of Republican rule were lining their pockets with money and making huge profits off of convincing people to buy houses and other things they couldn’t afford. Since folks’ incomes never went up, being able to pay things like credit card bills and house notes became an untouchable reality. This could have been figured out early on, but since deregulation – where Republican/corporate America worked together to get rid of all those pesky rules to keep those kinds of things from happening – no one caught it until it was too late. In the meantime, gas prices went up as did food and fees for just about every damn thing, while the dollar became worth about $.50 everywhere else in the world. (And when you think about it, maybe here, too.) You know, not to be all "Chicken Little" about it (you know the guy who said the sky was falling) but if I were you, I’d try to get a job overseas where the pound and the euro are worth twice the dollar and I’d start saving money under the mattress.
If you got a better idea, let us know.
-Hellifiknow