the unblock anti-paulson bailout plan.

[unblock]

noting that the cumulative paulson/bernanke bailouts and commitments have reached "a staggering $7,000,000,000,000",

here's my alternative. keep in mind that i had been a reluctant supporter of throwing money at the problem mostly because a poor plan was better than no plan, what seemed to be the main alternative.

now that the amount of money that people are apparently willing the throw at the problem has reached this level, a new alternative suggests itself:

cancel all the bailouts. instead, give $28,333 for every man, woman, and child in the united states. this is $7 trillion divided by 300 million u.s. residents.

that's right. a family of four gets $113,333. every homeless person gets $28,333.

all the institutions like aig or whoever we let fail.

ah, but do they fail? think what would happen if THAT MUCH MONEY was put in the hands of consumers and investors and ... EVERYBODY!

sure, some of these institutions will fail anyway, but perhaps they should. but failing institutions is not a problem IF successful institutions quickly rise up in their place.

and with that HUGE a demand push, there will be a TON of successful businesses, both new and old, that will rise up to get their claim of the average american's payout.

first and foremost, a lot of would-be foreclosures would no longer be foreclosures. people would be able to make their payments. first-time homebuyers would instantly have their down payment. a lot of problems would go away VERY quickly.


think about it....

[BlooInBloo]

1. It isn't immediately obvious that such a plan would end up worse.

[unblock]

2. what IS immediately obvious is that such a plan would end up in the trash bin

this is not the way we do socialism in this country!
the upside is not distributed nearly narrowly enough!

[BlooInBloo]

3. Well, yah. That was never in question, or *the* question, of course.

[depakid]

4. "think what would happen if THAT MUCH MONEY was put in the hands of consumers"

Massive inflation is what would happen!

[lurky]

5. And it won't cause inflation when they give it to the bankers?

Printing money is printing money. It's not necessarily bad. If we really are going into a deflationary spiral, a little inflationary pressure might save our ass.