Who’s Afraid of a Big, Bad Bailout?
Following is an excerpt from John Mauldin’s “Thoughts from the Front Line” and a link to the entire piece. It’s lengthy but a great articulation of the current financial situation and proposed government intervention. It is in the form of a letter to Congressman Joe Barton, TX, a top Republican House leader. John Mauldin is a multiple NYT Best Selling author and recognized financial expert. He has been heard on CNBC, Bloomberg and many radio shows across the country. He is the editor of the highly acclaimed, free weekly economic and investment e-letter that goes to over 1 million subscribers each week.
It’s the End of the World As We Know It
Dear Joe,
I understand your reluctance to vote for a bill that 90% of the people who voted for you are against. That is generally not good politics. They don’t understand why taxpayers should spend $700 billion to bail out rich guys on Wall Street who are now in trouble. And if I only got my information from local papers and news sources, I would probably agree. But the media (apart from CNBC) has simply not gotten this story right. It is not just a crisis on Wall Street. Left unchecked, this will morph within a few weeks to a crisis on Main Street. What I want to do is describe the nature of the crisis, how this problem will come home to your district, and what has to be done to avert a true, full-blown depression, where the ultimate cost will be far higher to the taxpayers than $700 billion. And let me say that my mail is not running at 10 to 1 against, but it is really high. I am probably going to make a lot of my regular readers mad, but they need to hear what is really happening on the front lines of the financial world.
