First, it took only two people to re-write my thoughts, ie. Joanna and Daniel. You guys do shed lots of light. Really. For me anyway.
So after much turmoil, I am re-thinking and re-hashing things here. I do realize that it will affect the much smaller mom-and-pop size small businesses, just as much as the larger corporations. I still couldn’t care less about the effect on the stock market though. But since we all have become such a global economy, I can only cave in and say this… “pump up the volume”. Not the music, but the volume of money into the economy.
But I still say that many of the things have to change, as many of the economists have said so themselves. First, purely investment banks like Goldman Sachs need to live up to higher standards. Second, if you are bailed out with the government money, we own you. Not so literally but in the sense that these companies will have to shape up and eventually pay it back.
While I still wanna agree with Ron Paul, I say we do so at different levels…. that the government pump in the money to those banks that make daily operations happen, so that small businesses could pay their employees, and so on. But in the end, I just want a financial revolution. I am sick and tired of pumping hot air into commodities when they don’t have that much value to begin with! Especially with crude oil prices! Fix that. Cap it. Whatever it takes to stabilize that.
While Daniel made good point with large bonuses to attract great management, it should come at some kind of conditions. Like if you let your company fail, you don’t deserve any [bonuses]. Am I bit naive about that? Yeah, you betcha. But that’s how the rest 90+% of us w/o some kind of financial degrees think. WaMu ex-CEO should really return that $18 million that he earned in 3 weeks ’cause he didn’t do jack.
In short, there better be a restructuring and monitoring within the financial companies. And lots of it. It was only a few years ago that Enron created a different type of disaster. If this happens again next time, I say return to the bartering system and to heck with it all.
EDIT: Joanna pointed me to a NY Times article that explains better the implications of the severity of the financial situation and why the bailout is needed (as much as we hate the idea).
http://www.reason.com/news/show/129158.html
here is an article from Reason.com. It is the published by the Cato Institute – a libertarian think tank. Of course, they are not in favor of the rescue, but it gives a point of view on it and does a good job on explaining how we got to where we are.