A cousin of mine once got so caught up in gambling she lost everything. It got so bad she was going to lose her house. She came to me and asked for help.
She said she was going to clean up her act and needed money to get back on her feet. I said sure and gave $4000 out of my savings...
Then she then went to Vegas for a week and came back to borrow another $2000. Well, of course I gave it to her because, after all, her problems are my problems, right?
WRONG, but unfortunately for your average taxpayer, that's exactly what the Federal Reserve is doing for "Cousin Wall Street".
Now before I get started on a loud and obnoxious rant, I want to preface it with this. I completely supported the first buyout.
I roughly understood the concept and need for such a measure. If Wall Street freezes up than nobody will lend me the money to buy that new TiVo I've been eyeing. So help the big, sad companies stay on their feet and infuse the market with liquid capital. Good deal.
So we did. We gave them money and said "Doctor! Heal thyself!"
...and then the DOW dropped another 600 points.
..Nice...
Since that first buyout
a week ago the stock market has dipped under 10,000. The stock market hasn't been under 10,000 since March 29, 1999. What have the executives at AIG (the recipients of our first midnight money wire from Western Union) been up to since then?
Why they took a $3 million dollar week off and, to add insult to injury, want more money from us!
Now I don't claim to know anything about money management. My checkbook looks like the worse game of Sudoku ever played, but something just doesn't ring smart about handing over your checkbook to a person who obviously has a gambling problem.
And don't give me the crap about this not being the same thing. The definition for addiction on
dictionary.com states that addiction is "
the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming....to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma."
Those in the stock market live their life by volatile numbers that could go either way simply by the whim of a barely comprehensible formula. Their lively hood, their well-being...hell, even their self-worth defined by how they
play the stocks. If that doesn't sound like an addiction, I don't know what does.
The difference between them and a run-of-the-mill drug addict or regular old working class gambler is that now, thanks to the FED, they're playing with our money and just as fast and loose as they always did. That doesn't work. The need to get help. They need to understand that what they're doing isn't healthy and someone needs to be monitoring them. A sponsor, so to speak, who will throw out the liquor bottles and check their arms for track marks.
I'm all for helping out family in trouble...but not with a blank check.
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