Bail-outs, Bail-outs, Anybody Need A Bail-out?

September 19th, 2008

[Disclaimer: Reading this may cause anxiety, distress, depression, heart palpitations, or any other number of potential side affects. Read at your own risk.]

I am not a big fan of bail-outs. So far the Gov’t has just been throwing money around, our tax money, to bail out private businesses that made bad business decisions. Why aren’t they bailing the american people out? We just aren’t big enough.

I am not a big fan of Big Gov’t. But if these private businesses are going to be bailed out, regulations should be in place so that this can’t happen again. If a company is deemed to be too big to fail, or have to many complex instruments that spread throughout the financial world, and thus they can’t be allowed to fail, then a company should never be allowed to get that big or get that complex. I believe in Capitalism. It is the best system to reward ingenuity and creativity. It rewards risk when the market buys into the “product”. But true Capitalism also takes care of failures. If the market, doesn’t buy into the “product”, then it will not last. I also believe true Capitalism assumes people are smart enough to regulate themselves. Many people have lost that aspect.

So far we are probably looking at $500BB to $1000BB (One Trillion) for the current bail-outs. This does not include the funds that the FDIC has been paying out for the banks that have already failed. I can not even fathom that amount of money. I read somewhere that if you took a Trillion one-dollar bills and stacked them, it would reach the moon. Whether that is true or not, here is some information on how long it would take to count our national debt.

One trillion seconds of ordinary clock time =

( 1012 sec)/( 3.16 x 107 sec/yr) = 31,546 years!
Six trillion seconds equals 189,276 years. Now, as an aside, along with the nearly six trillion miles in the light-year, you might be interested to know that there are nearly five trillion dollars in the current U.S. national debt. Is it any wonder that our politicians in Washington are concerned?

(An interesting bit of trivia: If one were to count the national Debt at the rate of one dollar per second, he or she would have to use a mechanical counter to click off the digits. Why? Because, if he or she counted in the usual way, saying “one, two, three, ?” etc., there would be numbers whose names are so large, that it would take more than a second of clock time to pronounce them. For example: “Nine hundred and ninety nine billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine,” takes about 8 seconds to pronounce.) — http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/how_big_is_a_trillion.htm

Note, the website that it is on. NASA. I’m so glad we are spending our tax dollars to help us figure those things out. All I can say is, “Yikes and Zoinkers”.

What are your thoughts? Like John McCain, I do believe in the strenth of most American people. I believe in their strength and creativity. I’m just not sure the Gov’t is working in the people’s best interests.

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-- By Chris Duncan

2 Responses to “Bail-outs, Bail-outs, Anybody Need A Bail-out?”

  1. Administrator Says:

    By the way, I did a calculation on the thickness of One Trillion dollar bills. If one dollar bill is 1/32 of an inch, you could surround the earth and then some. It would be about 30,825 miles.

  2. marci Says:

    I got here from moneyning – see my comments there today 🙂

    The above sounds like you downloaded my mind 🙂
    I am afraid that the strength and ingenuity of the American people, which I do believe in also, has been eroded with too many government handouts and a lot of those recipients will just stand around and wait for another handout to “save” them, rather than get up and take responsibility for themselves. Handouts beget more handouts, and then it begets a non-self-responsible attitude. I believe that if the government wants to work in the peoples’ best interest, then more self-responsibility needs to be instilled, not more handouts. It used to be the govt.’s helping hand was just that – a hand up, for help for a short time til one was on one’s feet. Seems like now it is a handout for a lifetime…. Something very wrong with that picture and the direction the USA is going in. In my opinion.

    PS – seems like this morning I hear there is a plan being developed so that these business bailouts don’t keep happening… haven’t heard all the details, but time will tell. One can hope.