Bush signs US$700B bailout bill into law, page 1

Sorry this has been talked about but I needed to put my opinion in here on ATS, and I wanted to start my first thread.

The passing of this bill got me to thinking, and that America has dissolved democracy within itself. Our government has bailed out BIG BUSINESS yet again, and left the common people in the dark. I'm not saying that we didn't need it, but this could have been done differently. Now that the businesses have been bailed out for the time being, the common people have no more money in their pocket, which is the real underlying problem.

The financial industry in our country has been in shambles for some time now and it is really an issue where nearly every aspect can be traced back to credit. The US dollar has been a monetary unit of credit since something like 1933, when we stopped backing all of our money with gold. Over the past 10-20 years, Americans have simply been buying things they couldn't afford. Banks continuously told people, "Why buy what you can afford today? Buy what you can afford 20 years from now!" Of course the majority of the population jumped on the bandwagon, taking out loans, and the banks gave these loans out like flyers.

Now that the time for this money to be collected has come around, nobody can afford payments, having gone bonkers on their credit cards and getting themselves in more debt that Mike Tyson. THIS IS THE PROBLEM HERE. The PEOPLE of the United States have no money, thus, the businesses fail. Businesses have no money because people cannot pay them.

This "bailout plan" is suppose to help out the industry, but not the people. This does not fix the problem. The real problem is the fact that now the industry has a big band-aid over it, while it won't heal as the people still have no money, only leaving the same problem to repeat itself. Here are two ideas I've heard as alternatives:

1. A "bigger and better" stimulus check (even though the first one only paid about a month's bills for most Americans).

2. Applications are sent out to all legal taxpayers in which people fill out forms regarding how much debt they are in through which financial institutions. Through this they decide how much you need, and they send the money directly to the companies in your name. (Essentially this is a government grant to those in need. This could have been done with the $700 billion)

So here we are, on the verge of blackness. A blackness not seen since the 1930's. Now we could pull out of this, and I hope we do. Nobody wants to see us crash again (this would take quite a bit for us to completely fall). However, anything is possible. Whoever is elected into office next definitely knows the daunting task that looms ahead, and we can only hope that they will find a way to fix this problem.

I am interested to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions on this matter.

www.ctv.ca
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