Stimulus doesn't get to heart of matter
In analyzing some statistics from the Bureau of Census for 2006, it is very clear to me these bailout packages that have been sold to us by the media and politicians as necessary because of home mortgage defaults are absolutely and totally wrong. The 300 million people in America are living in 126.3 million housing units of which 83.6 million (66.2%) are homeowners. Of these 83.6 million homes, 33 percent are estimated to be owned free and clear and the rest have mortgages, so 56.0 million homeowners have mortgages.
Say 10 percent of these mortgages, or 5.6 million mortgages, default and assume an average (probably on the high side) home mortgage of $200,000, the total amount apt to default would be around $1.1 trillion. Given those figures, every defaulted homeowner mortgage could be paid in full with the two $750 plus billion stimulus packages, and remember there would still be an asset, the house, behind the failed mortgage. There would no longer be even one bad debt on any bank's balance sheet. What are we going to do next? Bail out the credit card companies?
So, let's get to the real problem with the economy. The huge corporations have sold out America. They have not done this by growth, but through acquisition after acquisition with their obscene multimillion dollar high paid executives in bed with Washington's lobbied politicians through so called free trade (not fair trade) policies, regulations and relaxed tariffs, by shipping the American jobs overseas. In the meantime companies here are closing at accelerating rates as a result of this egregious greed.
They have one objective, and it is not the welfare of America, it is the bottom line on the income statement. The working middle class in America is being displaced by the 80-hour-a-week sweat shops abroad. These corporations are ruining America. The packages are a temporary fix at best.
They will not work as constructed, and will ultimately lead to higher unemployment, higher taxes and runaway inflation.
Do we really want to do away with the safety protection of our workers and products to get cheap labor? Do we really want our middle class to work 80 hours a week at sweat shop rates in order to compete and hold a job? We keep hearing that our workers have to be retrained to compete. Retrained for what? The jobs aren't there anymore.
It's time to break up these inhumane huge corporations and conglomerates that work for the bottom line only and ship the jobs overseas. They have sold out the middle class and America. These stimulus packages are smoke and mirrors to the real problem.
Leo A. Dietrich
Lake Villa