If they don't pass this bailout, and you work for someone else (a company, a boss, whatever), then your job is in great jeopardy. Plan accordingly.
I was thinking, you know who is going to do fine no matter what? If we don't do something to alleviate the pain by reigniting the credit markets, and everything goes to hell, no jobs, no credit for homes or cars or municipal improvements or student loans or anything, one group that will absolutely be fine are the Amish. I shit you not. They don't need utilities, they build their own homes and barns and stuff, they're not dependent on credit, they have their own transportation that doesn't require gas, and they grow their own food.
Basically, if we pass this bill, we'll still suffer a recession. If we don't, it may be WAY worse than that. The ripple effects are already beginning, and spreading. As businesses shut down, people lose their jobs. Unemployment grows, and the people who WERE paying their mortgage, now suddenly out of a job, default on theirs, making things worse. As more people are unemployed, there is less need for as many businesses, so more go out of business, dumping more people on the street. And on and on it could go, a vicious cycle.
This has happened before in Sweden and Japan. Both countries, like ours, had no real choice but to let the government step in and bail things out with taxpayer dollars. But the results were completely different.
In Sweden, they acted QUICKLY, nationalized a few banks, bought up defaulted mortgages. Then over five years they sold all that stuff as their economy recovered. In the end, Sweden's taxpayers kicked ass on their bailout investment, and they are roaring along just fine now. They still have part of one bank left to sell, and they're asking about $45 billion for it. The total cost of their bailout was $10 billion. They made huge profit on their bailout.
Japan waited much longer to react to the problem. The result of being slow to do anything caused them to drop into a huge recession that lasted most of a decade. They call it 'the lost 90s' or 'the lost decade'. Their cost was $170-ish billion, and they didn't get much of that back. Even today, Japan's economy STILL hasn't recovered to 1994 levels.
So, the question isn't, do we have to do something. Of course we do. If we don't, we're basically laying down in a grave and helping shovel dirt over ourselves. The question is which model do we follow: Sweden's (act quickly) or Japan's (act slowly). How quickly we react and get this bill passed will dictate whether we're in a recession for 2 years, or if even after 15 or 20 years we still haven't recovered. Heck, we might not EVER recover if we don't do anything.
it will only delay the problem and make it worse
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