Now that our lovely, irresponsible financial institutions have received their bailouts, they’ve been acting remarkably responsible and level headed, making loans to people whose risk factors are low, reducing the chance of defaults through compassionate, intelligent adjustments to their members’ interest rates, and generally reinvesting the money internally to insure against future failure.
I lie. They’re up to the same old garbage. As we were warned, those who are irresponsible are still going to be irresponsible the second time around. Those billions upon billions of dollars are going towards reinforcing that abysmal behavior we’ve all come to know and loathe.
But bitching about the bailout is useless. The money has been paid. The check is written. We can’t take it back, right?
Well… I have an idea. It won’t get us our cash back, exactly, but it’ll mitigate some of the pain. The money that the government used to bail the banks out is our money. Allowing the government to own stock is simply scary… so my proposal? They take the stock that they’ve purchased and distribute it among U.S. citizens who file an income tax return this year. Take that government stock and return it to the private sector.
My goal, of course, is to get government back out of the stock market. I’m uncomfortable with the U.S. Government taking over banks. Therefore… let us, the people, control the banks. Give us the stocks, let us trade them freely. Let us sell / trade those stocks to other, more responsible banks if we choose. If we have confidence in Chase or Bank of America, we’ll hold onto those stocks!
Most importantly, let’s return that money to the people who earned it.
Granted, the solution isn’t perfect… but it’s a hell of a stop gap, wouldn’t you say?