Give money to people, not banks

Why is all the taxpayer money going directly to big business, especially Wall Street?

It is widely accepted by the vast majority of economists that our economy is consumer driven (between 65 and 70 percent).

Since the majority of people have been impacted by wage cuts, benefit cuts, and job loss, people simply have no money to spend! As gas prices skyrocketed and as people lost their homes, consumer spending has decreased dramatically. No one wanted to take on new debt, so now all of a sudden no one wanted to get in on any more packaging and reselling of mortgage debt (and other big finance shell games).

Instead, these investors wanted out. As they sold off their holdings to get their investments (money) back, banks couldn't pay out because people stopped making mortgage payments, so that market collapsed. (By the way, little real money has changed hands, it's all on paper and in electronic fund form.) The major impact is that home values dropped, so now people owe more, can't get lines of credit based on equity, which translates to no spending money!

Instead of giving away $700 billion here and $300 billion there all to the Wall Street financial giants, give the money to the people. People would pay off debts so the banks are happy, people would buy stuff, including cars to make retailers and manufactures happy.

Then we can address all the other problems created by our supposed leaders (government and industry) of the last eight years, like health care, living wages, and good jobs in here in the U.S.

Klaus Trieb

Hoffman Estates