Here’s a portion of a conversation that I overheard while grabbing a quick smoke outside of my office this afternoon:
- Person A – “You know that stimulus? All they had to do was give $200 grand to every American and that would stimulate the economy!”
- Person B – “Yeah!”
- Person C – “That would do it.”
This is not the first time that I have heard this suggestion. This kind of solution is usually offered by people who aspire to construct their opinions using the rule of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). A closer look at the suggestion reveals that @ $200,000 per American, the suggested bailout would total roughly $60 trillion dollars. Hm, let’s see. That’s eighty five times the $700 billion dollar bailout amount. Really? That can’t be right, can it?
Sadly it is. The per-American share of $700 billion would be about $2,500. Doesn’t seem like such a good plan at this level, huh?.
Whatever one’s view on the bank bailout, and there are many, one teensy weensy detail is missing from the “bailout every American” idea.
The bailout is supposed to be repaid!
Does every American wish to be loaned $2,500 by Uncle Sam? Sure, there would be many takers, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves into viewing it as free money.
The banks can’t wait to repay the bailouts! Who can blame them? They are directly in the cross-hairs of everyone who has a problem with Wall Street, which means that practically everyone hates them. Those poor bankers are everyone’s favorite villain in this whole economic mess. The threat of special fees and taxes being imposed on their humongous bonuses are making them very uneasy. I feel for them. Really, I do. Don’t you?
As I exhaled my last drag, I knew that I didn’t have the heart to put a damper on the group’s new found populist fervor, so I let it slide and went about my business. Who ever said that it was my job to snap people back to reality anyway?
Ray } – 
