Comments on the bailout - sorry, the "rescrew"

There are no apples in the applecart. Our elected and appointed leaders have been so busy trying to destroy each other without upsetting the applecart; they have neglected the orchard, now they have to borrow apples to have any to steal. When the government steps up to bailout a bankrupt greed-machine, is has to borrow the money to do it. These are the people who call social security an “entitlement program” as if it had suddenly become a wealth transfer program. They forgot that the vast wealth of the social security trust was invested in U.S. Savings Bonds that the government is defaulting. How can it borrow to bailout when it cannot pay its own debts? At one time we lowly taxpayers could pay a mortgage and put some money in the bank. The money in the bank and the value of our home would double every ten years and after a few decades of nose to the grindstone we could retire without a worry. Then one day the government decided we had too much money in the bank, “just sitting there”. Never mind that health care has become impossible to plan for or that taxes on a paid-for home are higher that the mortgage used to be, we still had some money in the bank. They started controlling interest rates for some reason no credible economist has been able to explain. The problem is that our corporations have fallen into the hands of inept elitists who know how to amass wealth, but do not know how to make money. To keep Wall Street alive the government squeezed our money out of the banks by artificially suppressing interest rates. The only place we have the promise of any return is “in the market”. At one time we could buy shares and collect dividends. Today, dividends are meager because all the money goes home with the inept elite who have cooked the books to increase their bonuses or laid off a large percentage of the payroll to increase their margins while the company struggles to function without experienced personnel. To keep the corporations alive they have to get a federal bailout, but the big applecart is empty. They have not only stolen the money we once had in the bank, they are putting us deeper in debt so they can keep stealing our apples. We have no right to tell the heads of corporations how much money they can take from the profits. Remember profits? When the leadership of a corporation is not producing profits, they might have to realize that “first you make the money, and then you take your share”. If a company gets a bailout, then the executives should not expect to make more that the President of the United States. That would be a reasonable salary cap for a person who has not made money for the investors. While we are making reforms, why not take the restrictions off interest rates and allow them to be set by a market with a level playing field? Then we lowly taxpayers might have a secure place to save the little money we might have left after taxes from bailing out the inept elite.