it's been a while, and the economy has since hit the shitter

si haven't written in over a week, because there's been so much to absorb, things i don't really understand and have been trying to better get my arms around. namely, the economy.

i read the ny times, and get the bulk of my information, news, and opinions from the best paper in the country, which also happens to lean liberal (yay!). i've been reading the business section, in addition to my usuals (i.e. the opinion page and the main section) because i'm treading in political waters i don't really get, and i want to. i need to. i have a 401k, i have an ira, i have a bank account with an ever-devolving washington mutual, as well as a savings account and money market account elsewhere. i have money in a market that is tanking more and more every day. and i'm being led by a government of dipshits who decry socialism when it involves taking money from the rich to give to the poor, but don't think twice when socialist policies take money from the poor to give to the rich. and that's the way i see this new bailout plan proposed by dubya and his cronies...

if i'm wrong, tell me. if i'm way off base, tell me. if you can point me in a direction that can show that i'm misunderstanding hank paulson's plan and that backward socialism isn't what's in play here, please do.

if our government wants to involve itself in this economic crises and do something to ward off a pending depression (do a history lesson and you'll quickly discover that the gilded age depressed when banks collapsed after risky investments in railroads and the great depression when banks collapsed after risky investments in farms and you'll see that we're in a similar and predictable predicament now via risky real estate investments), i support the endeavor. however, i would be much more supportive of a plan that gives that $700,000,000,000 (did i get those zero's right?) to the borrowers who are now losing their homes, with a trickle up effect, than the lenders who set up this risky scam and already have millions in the bank while begging taxpayers for golden parachutes out of this debacle they created.

$700 billion bucks is what richie rich is asking for to bail out his golden buddies on wall street, but how exactly is that meant to trickle down to wall street? are poory mcpoorstein and average mcjoe going to benefit from richie rich's bail-out? i dunno, can't see how. maybe i'll benefit a bit while my 401k and ira stabilize, but with my 6-figure salary and job security, i'm not worried about my investments. if they tank, i'll cry. i'll feel shitty about the money i lost in the market, but i'll still wake up tomorrow with a job, a roof over my head, and an opportunity to restock those lost funds.

and i don't have that much. i'm not getting a $40 million severance package for tanking a company and costing 20,000 jobs (see carly fiorina, a big mccain economic advisor till her gaffe (see freudian slip) that mccain and palin are both economic dummies with no business running a company (and this coming from one of the greatest failures in corporate american leadership)). i just don't understand how and why anyone can argue that this bailout is a good idea. it essentially gives a boat-load of MY MONEY (and yours, my fellow tax-payers) to the very people who created this mess, while letting the homeowners who've already suffered the loss of their homes, jobs, hope, and money, lose everything else, without any regulation or oversight to make sure good ole hank doesn't crown himself king of the free world. how is that going to help america? how is that going to help anyone who doesn't already have pockets lined with gold?

how is that going to keep henry paulson, jr. from becoming king of the once great democracy known as America?