The economy is falling! The economy is falling!

The economy is spinning like a hippie girl at a Grateful Dead concert. All of this hoopla over the bailout of failing banks, insurance companies and trading firms has me feeling very conflicted. Part of me says, “Let ‘em fail, I don’t need credit!”, but I think the issue is deeper than that. From what I gather, when we start looking at no one having the ability to borrow money, it is going to cause a lot of companies to fail. Some companies use credit on a daily basis, based on a profit they will make in the future, or some companies use credit to make payroll, finance new construction, etc. If these companies fail, people lose jobs, and don’t have as much money to put back into the economy by buying things from other companies, and then THOSE companies fail, and the dog that the old lady swallowed to eat the cat to eat the mouse to eat the frog to eat the fly (I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she’ll die) will fail, too.

NPR had an economist on and he was part of a group of economists that don’t believe a bailout is necessary. His argument was that credit would be available, but it would be harder to get a loan, and interest would be higher. People would have to pay CASH for things, my goodness! And he did have an interesting point. But I think at this point it is all just opinion, no one really knows what would happen if no bailout occurred. Maybe it is safer to spend the 700 billion just to be on the safe side. I like eating, you know?

But it really does tick me off that these executives are walking away with millions and billions of dollars. I think they should be forced to have very, very low incomes if they are to be bailed out, and heck, why not through in some community service, too? And make them do a chicken dance on national television. Something along those lines. Because I don’t think they should get off scott free. I don’t think they should be allowed to keep their Manhattan penthouses and limousines, they should have to do as we did, and move to an armpit, so that they can afford to live.

When I got pregnant with S, we were having some financial difficulty, and had been for a while. We were making the mortgage payment, but not some others, and it was iffy every month. We knew when S came along, we could not afford day care, and that one of us would have to stay home. I spoke with the mortgage company on many occasions, explaining that we were looking at being about 500$ short of our payment amount (on a 2,000 payment), and was there any way to make reduced payments until our son got old enough to make day care more reasonable, say like a year? They wouldn’t even consider it. Nope, we won’t do it, I was told. They wouldn’t even ACCEPT part of a payment. I couldn’t fathom that they wouldn’t take some money, even if it wasn’t the whole thing. No wonder the fing banks are failing. Hello?!

We tried to sell the house, but with no luck. So, we packed up and moved to a much smaller, cheaper town across the country. We were lucky enough to do a short sale, and the bank took a $10,000 hit on the loan. But they weren’t helpful at all when I asked about the short sale program. I talked to three people and got three different explanations. Luckily, I was contacted by a realtor who specialized in short sales, and he handled everything.

I would love to still be in Denver, I miss it so badly some days. But we did what we needed to do to be able to live. You would think the mortgage companies would show the same flexibility – but I guess not.