$700 Billion Bail-Out Put Into Perspective By Minot Daily News
2 Comments Published October 8th, 2008 in Beyond North Dakota, Politics and Government.This editorial from Minot Daily News puts the $700 billion bail-out in perspective very quickly. The Magic City could build 35,000 new schools or county office buildings…or give more than $19 million to each resident. $700 billion is A LOT of money.
Of course, that wouldn’t fix the economic problems at the national level. But what North Dakota community WOULDN’T want $700 billion?
What community wouldn’t be concerned about so much money being spent?
Remember that scene in “Austin Powers” when Dr. Evil demands a ransom of $100 billion (after first requesting only a million)? It was funny because to the average person $100 billion is a ridiculously unreal amount of money. $700 billion might as well be a million billion gazillion dollars! What really put it in perspective for me was the $2,292.83 to each US resident. That’s not very much, when you consider the financial hardship and debt most of us carry. I sincerely hope that this “bail out” “filters down” to us (middle class) or helps the economy turn around again, but I’m not too confident. The underlying problems will still be there: corporate/political greed and gross mismanagement.
What is really sad about these bailouts is the fact that big corporations it seems are using the money for retreats, and vacations at taxpayer’s expense. I understand something had to be done to try to stave off the bad economy, although how much more will we have to do on bailouts? How many more companies will make poor choices, and just think “oh well the government will bail us out”.
We cannot keep doing this, sit back, and watch the taxpayers that have to pay for this bailout, become homeless at the same time that the government is saving CEO’s huge salaries.
To top it all off even if we stabilize our economy, if other world markets collapse in the meantime we will be greatly impacted financially by that too. Then will we be forced to bail out other countries all together? There has to be an end in sight somewhere.