It has gotten to the point in this country that saying something or writing something can be as confusing, misleading or downright dishonest as you want it to be. Half the country will take it as gospel, whatever it is, and the other half will either ignore it or dispute what the first half think. Most people will not take the time to find out whether it ever portrayed the right message. Case in point was a recent announcement that foreclosures had gone up 25 percent from the previous year. I heard many say that it was beyond a national tragedy that one-fourth of the homes were in foreclosure and others said they didn't think it was that high. Nobody convinced the other side and everyone moved on. In reality foreclosures were about 6 percent to 8 percent of the homes last year and having gone up 25 percent means they are 7.5 percent to 10 percent this year.
Back to Hank Paulson. Today we heard the debate as to whether he should have stuck to the plan or at least part of the plan that Congress approved. He thought his new idea was better and had already acted upon it to some extent. The debate went on with some suggesting we should consider doing the new plan while others thought the old plan should be done or perhaps a little of each. Where was the indignation that normal people would have shown if they dropped their early teen aged kids at the movie theater and found out they had gone
across town to a party instead. Are we so numb to the financial beatings some or all of us have taken that we just can't react to any more financial suprises? This isn't a small matter unless you aren't impressed with $700 billion, which of course we don't have. If you trace the raising of the money to the funding of the various projects and realize the risk this nation is taking,and then find out we aren't even doing what we thought was this high risk I for one would be outraged. Aren't you?
Are you relieved to find out half the money hasn't been spent and will be turned over to President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, who might think that part of it can be used to enter the Power Ball Lottery or maybe some other type of plan We don't know who the person is or what he or she might do but we know they get $350 Billion to do it with. This is turning out better than the old TV show "Queen for a Day." Have we lost our collective minds?
I think it is time to end this essay before I start obsessing over the Big 3 Automaker bailout and really go nuts. Perhaps tomorrow I shall awake and find out this was just a dream, excuse me, a nightmare along with the Sub-prime Mess, The Credit Crunch, The Real Estate Bubble, The CDS and Derivative Problems and the dawning of a Recession. Or maybe, just maybe someone else will really get upset. Hopefully it will be somebody who can do something other than write about it!