I've never identified with John McCain--I mean, I was never a pilot, nor a prisoner, nor a hero--until the other day when he said he always had trouble with economics, or words to that effect. Senator, I'm with you.
What seems to have happened, as best this amateur can tell, is that a lot of institutions--government, investment banks, and so on--made a lot of bad loans to people who thought they could afford to buy a house and then found out they couldn't. So now, foreclosures, and some sort of government bailout program so that the institutions that made these bad loans don't collapse, leaving the rest of us outside the bank asking plaintively, "Where's our money?"
Some intervention is obviously needed. It would be good, I think, if it weren't just a government to the rescue bailout. If the government is going to buy bad notes, let's hope there's some mechanism so that when the economy gets better, and the bad notes' value increases, the government can sell them at a profit and the taxpayers will see some recovery, get some money back in tax cuts, or whatever.
We've gotten used to a government that's in debt, saddled with one ridiculously expensive bummer, the war in Iraq. Now we have two.
The presidential candidates have their first debate this week--Friday--and I hope they get asked not only how we got into this mess, but how we get out of it--where the hell we go from here.
Gotta go now; time to call my bank.
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