bailout vs. iraq

Since I wrote so much about not wanting the “bailout” bill to pass, I guess I should write something about the fact that it did.

 

Yay! Our economy is saved! And you can tell because Wall Street has miraculously rebounded over the past few days!

 

*crickets*

 

Seriously…I mean, it has obviously been my opinion all along that the bailout is no economic savior; but you’d think the stock market would have looked at least a little better, just based on the prospect of some help for the big financial firms.

 

I had dinner with some old friends last Tuesday and one of them told me she and her husband had lost $60k from their retirement fund (much of which is invested in the stock market). Now they really have no choice but to leave it invested in stocks, just based on the hope that the market will eventually rebound and they’ll get their money back…some day…luckily, they’re not too much older than I, so they have a bit of time to wait it out and hope.

 

My friend Nancy has lost almost that much and she’s already essentially retired. Now she has to consider looking for a job again.

I’m sure there are far worse scenarios, too…you know, such as the guy I heard about on the news this morning, who killed his entire family and then himself, all because of his financial woes.

 

Oh and you know the health care we’re all looking forward to when Obama becomes President? Um…eyah…good luck on that. And good luck on much of his economic plan, such as free pre-Kindergarten education, more affordable college education, road and other infrastructure improvements, etc. That money all went to bail out Wall Street.

 

All I can say is – thank GOD one of the few things we kept Dubya from doing during his administration was privatizing Social Security! Can you imagine if everyone’s SS was tied up in this f’n stock market? SS is broke enough as it is.

 

*sigh*

 

Anyway, until we back down on all of our military spending by ending the war in Iraq, we will not have an economic recovery of any substance. That’s just how it is, folks. You can’t continue pissing away that kind of money and living in a deficit forever.

It is ironic to me that we have thus far spent $648 billion on the war in Iraq (remember when Cheney said the war was going to pay for itself, by way of Iraqi oil? What happened to that notion? Of course, it was also only supposed to cost $50-60 billion in total). With another $68.6 billion pledged to our wars in the coming year, the total spent on wars since Bush came to office is an amount fairly equivalent to the amount now pledged in this bail out plan.

You get where I’m going with this, right? We fucked ourselves. And for what?

 

Also, the sooner we get out of Iraq, the sooner we can devote sufficient attention to Afghanistan and, hopefully, therefore end that war sooner than later. That war will never end until we throw sufficient resources at it to put an end to it (not that I really agree with that war, either, but at least it’s slightly more justified).

The end of both wars is what is needed to enact a full economic recovery.