Start Bailing

Well, I'm planning on getting three or four (maybe even five) credit cards and then running up a big old bill. Heck, I might sign up for an obscenely-poorly regulated mortgage too. And I'll buy a car on credit. Maybe a boat. Take that trip to Aruba I always wanted.

Because apparently everyone is in a "saving stupid consumers" mood. So I'll get lots of money if I just act really stupidly, right?

This is starting to sound a bit like those people who took out massive loans before Y2K in expectation that civilization would crumble and they'd get free money. Except in this case, it's not illegal. It's a bail-out.

Let me make my position on this crystal clear. If you do stupid things, you should probably have to live with the consequences. There is no Smart Police out there to check and make sure what you're doing is smart. So if you sign up for a loan and don't read the fine print, guess what, you're stupid and you are undoubtedly going to get sympathy and money from the government. If you spend beyond your means, you're going to get a terrific credit rating, and probably sympathy and money from the government. Anyone who spends, spends, spends is helping the economy, and so therefore we should encourage their stupidity by bailing them out.

I'm not saying we should let the economy crumble. Far from it. I am, however, saying that, while I don't have a lot of sympathy for predatory lenders, consumers ought to know better.

It is, to use an analogy, similar to playing the lottery every day for 5 years, then complaining that you've pissed a lot of money away for no result. Do we feel sorry for gamblers who lose? Well, probably we do now. Where's the personal responsibility?

If you're currently in poor financial straits because you were a working class schmo whose job was outsourced and then little Jennifer got cancer, my heart goes out to you. We should probably take away money from the government, from me even (though it's hard to get blood from a stone), to make sure that little Jennifer doesn't die of a treatable disease. We might even go so far as to take money away from other people and help you out with your house payments, which were perfectly within your means until you lost your job through no fault of your own.

If, on the other hand, you signed up for a mortgage with "Bob's House of Discount Mortgages, Savings, and Loan," and then bought three TVs, two BMWs, and that boat I want to buy, and now you can't make the payments because in the fine print it says that the company can adjust their rates to any rate they want at any time without telling you, then you know what? Screw you.

Likewise, if you're a big bank which invested heavily in Bob's House of Discount Mortgages Et Al, and now that Bob has run off to Aruba with his profits, he isn't sending you money any more, so you're going bankrupt and your CEO might have to take a pay cut, screw you too. The idiots who made those decisions should be fired, and their pay should go to paying people who are going to lose their jobs because of those idiotic decisions.

People are all about capitalism red in tooth and claw until it starts to affect capitalism's PR, at which point they're all about bail-outs. Know what? Screw them too. You think markets should be completely unregulated, so they can find their own levels because capitalism and libertarianism is the greatest? Hope you like it.

But likewise, other people are all about regulation, to the point where banks must decided whether people are being smart. Since when do banks have to be the Smart Police? It's worth it to them to do it in most cases, because smart choices with money usually lead to banks being able to collect on loans. But if they don't, exactly where is the accountability of the customer, who was stupid?

So I think I'll be really stupid with my money, and then people will feel sorry for me and offer to bail me out. And then I'll get to join the pity party too, and complain about being oppressed. I'm a white male; what other chance do I have to do that?