The bailout of Wall Street couldn’t have happened at a better time for the average American who will have to foot the bill.
This week Albertson’s has Campbell’s soup on sale for 50 cents a can and our larders are full. True wealth is a shelf full of mushroom, tomato and chicken noodle soup. You won’t open the cabinet some morning and find some banker has lost half of it, or some stockbroker bet on the wrong company and it’s all gone. We’ll always have our soup, even if the retirement savings in our 401K-aputs disappear.
Right now, a lot of companies on Wall Street are worth less than one shelf full of soup.
With Americans so flush with soup, we realize the dire need to bail out Wall Street. We may not have Ph.D.’s in economics from the University of Chicago like the people who got us into this mess, but we’ve got common sense. We can sense when someone needs help.
Americans instinctively know that Fannie Mae needed help. We imagine Fannie Mae as a bulky old gal with a broad smile and big hug for everyone. But she’s a bit of a soft touch, willing to give a handout to anyone with a need, such as a fancy new house and two Humvees in the garage, so it’s not surprising she needed a few hundred billion from us, the taxpayers of America. Just the thought of her joy at getting all that money is all we need in return.
Freddie Mac is a different story, but who can’t help but love the mischievous old coot? Freddie talks a mile a minute, has a trunkful of great stories and is everyone’s best friend. But he’s got a bit of a gambling problem that got him in trouble, so we don’t mind bailing him out. Who wants to see good ol’ Freddie to to jail?
Another good guy deserving of some financial help is Bear Stearns. We fully concur that he should have been rescued with our money by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, who are valiantly spending every penny we have to save Wall Street. We don’t personally know Bear Stearns, but we sure like his step-brother, Grizzly Adams. Grizzly went to live in the wilds while Bear tried to make it on Wall Street where he got viciously attacked by predators. Americans are always ready help the needy. We just hope Bear takes the money and moves in with Grizzly, where it’s safe.
The AIG bailout wasn’t so easy to support once we realized the AIG wasn’t a grocery store. A&P at least carries soup, but all AIG does is sell insurance. Americans are forced to buy insurance for their cars and homes, and insurance companies spend their time creating loopholes so they don’t have to pay us if anything serious happens. On the other hand, Americans have faith in their unelected officials like Paulson and Bernanke who actually run this county, so we’ll go ahead and bail out AIG on their say-so.
Now they tell us that all this bailin’ out hasn’t done much good, so Congress is working on a bill to bail out everyone on Wall Street in one fell swoop. This will ultimately cost trillions, but that’s OK. We’ve got plenty of tomato soup for dinner tonight.
