Bad News For The Bailout

213401 Resource 102972 21 21 1222437756824 1222439460190 Controlled The Paulson Plan: Bad News For The Bailout

When history judges this administration, it will not be kind.

I've been an entrepreneur for almost 30 years (geeze!  is it really that long?).  Along the way, I've raised money for a few different companies.  Not super-ultra-large piles of money, mind you; not $billions, and certainly not $700 billion. (That's $700,000,000,000.00!  Looks even bigger that way, eh?)But even when raising a couple million dollars for a business everyone believes would grow, my investors insisted on comprehensive analysis... use of funds, revenue projections, risk factors, etc., etc., etc.  You'd think (I certainly would) that if I were asking for a billion dollars, let alone $700 billion dollars, and that I was asking on behalf of a business that is failing, my investors would want at least the same level of analysis (and likely much, much more.)Ah, but I am not the Bush administration.  And my investors were not my puppets.The Bush administration does not need careful analysis.  It uses something even more compelling.  Fear.  Just tell everyone we are on the brink of <insert tragedy here e.g., WMDs, depressions, etc.> and that the president must have unbridled authority to act quickly to save our nation.So, how did the Bush administration come up with the $700 billion figure?  As reported in <a title="Bad News for the Bailout" href="http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html" target="_blank">Forbes.com</a>:<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."</blockquote>Scary, huh? 9 application/xml bailout Bush administration Forbes scary Bad News For The Bailout Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun 09.23.08 | Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html false "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 173251 false false true false false false true 213405 Resource 173251 173239 21 1222440631129 1222440765987 Controlled Freaks me out

Remember what happened last time we gave this Administration power?

You make a good point about fear. I remember what happened the last two times Congress granted sweeping powers to the executive to "save" us: USA PATRIOT Act and the Iraq War. All disasters. We should not trust this administration's fear mongering. 10 application/xml false Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091618 Firefox/3.0.2 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 66.182.71.19 false true false false true 213408 Resource 173251 173239 21 1222445465658 1229403218903 Controlled Define "billion"

I got this info in a forwarded email, it puts it in perspective...

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.<ul><li>A billion seconds ago it was 1977.</li><li>A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.</li><li>A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.</li><li>A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.</li><li>A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.</li></ul> 10 application/xml false billion Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 102972 blog blogsite/Seidl/web