How much is $700 billion?
The U.S. Congress is considering a 'bail out' package today to 'save our economy'. I'm not so sure passage of this bill would save our economy. In fact, I think passing this bill will only postpone the inevitable and do more irreparable harm to our country.
$700 billion is a lot of money. I don't think the American people have any idea how much 700 billion is. Let's think about it for a moment.
More than 22,196 years have passed in 700 billion seconds.
The sun is 93 million miles from Earth. If you traveled to the sun (and back) 3,763 times you still wouldn't have gone 700 billion miles.
There are 1,300 kernels of corn in one pound. 700 billion kernels of corn would weigh 538,461,538 pounds. How many people could you feed with all that corn?
The U.S. imported 3.66 billion barrels of oil last year. It would take 191 years like last year to import that much oil.
The GMC Sierra Pickup in my driveway was roughly $35,000. I could buy 20 million of them with $700 billion. In fact, if I had $700 billion I could buy 4,375,000 homes like the one I own now.
More importantly, however, is the fact that $700 billion amounts to an additional tax burden of $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in America. Our national debt is already sitting at nearly $10 trillion. Every man, woman, and child in America already owes $32,760 for that debt. Should we really be adding this much to it?
Why should we have to pay out of our pockets because of mis-management at Wall Street investment firms? Why should we have to pay out of our pockets because lenders relaxed the rule and made loans to people who could never repay the loans? Why should we have to pay out of our pockets to bail out those would could not manage their own money?
The 'bail out' under consideration allows the government to "buy" the bad debt that is currently on the books of these companies that knew what they were doing. This 'bail out' is basically the beginning of the nationalization of our banking industry. It's just a matter of time. These companies brought this on, and we the American people are going to end up paying for it. They gambled with their books and lost. Now they want us, the American people, to foot the bill for them and Congress is helping them.
Should we 'bail out' people when they make a bad business decision? Should we 'bail out' people that get in too deep? Should we 'bail out' people when their investments tank on them?
Why should we 'bail out' some companies and not others? What standards should be used to decide which companies are worthy of a 'bail out' and which ones are not?
Why not 'bail out' everyone struggling with their mortgage right now? Why not 'bail out' everyone having trouble paying for gasoline? Why not 'bail out' everyone that owes anyone anything?
Can we really afford all of that? Of course we can't, and we cannot afford this bail out either.
This 'bail out' is a really bad idea. Bad business decisions cause businesses to fail. Bad businesses are meant to fail. They fail for a reason. I think it would be better to let these businesses fail and let the companies that didn't cook their books or make risky investments rise above it all.
We shouldn't work to 'bail out' companies that never lifted a finger to hold the bucket and bail themselves out first. I want no part of this 'bail out' and you shouldn't either. All you have to do is look at the 700 billion holes in the bucket to understand why.
Chip Flowers
[...] Congress is discussing a $700 billion 'bail out' for Wall Street, but there seems to be quite a few holes in the bucket. [...]
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