The Great Bailout - Economics is Not an Exact Science

by Gary Schubach, Ed.D., A.C.S.

For the last three hours I have been reading articles favoring and opposing the federal "Bail-out:" compromise. MSNBC featured some thoughtful pieces such as:

• Foreclosures are key element missing in plan
• Democrats got many concessions in bailout but GOP held fast to not tying $700 billion proposal to homeowner relief
• The winners, and losers in a post-bailout U.S.

IF the bill is going to be defeated, it would have to involve an unprecedented coalition of liberal and conservative lawmakers. Dennis Kucinich has issued a short statement saying that he will oppose the vote tomorrow although his reasons and what he would do were not clear enough for me. Many conservative republicans are preparing to oppose the "Bail-out:" and I want to know why they will vote against and what they want done. I want to know how Ted Kennedy is going to vote on this and why. I thank Warren Buffett for his predictions of market meltdown and I would like to know precisely how that meltdown will effect his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

I am interested in what both Oberman and O'Reilly think about about the bailout. We might have some strange bedfellows.

If this bail-out goes through, there is no guarantee that the stock market may not yet meltdown from inflation and rising unemployment. We have two becoming problems that must be resolved or they will sink the economy down the line and in their resolution we will become a better country. First the energy crisis and the patriotic duty to pull together to find cheap, abundance and ecologically benign sources of energy so that so much of our resources can stay at home to be used to design the transportation systems of the future. The other is the health care crisis which involves the largest per capita spending (including uninsureds) in the world and yet 50 million people have no coverage. Not resolving this so that health insurance is a right and not a privilege will also lead to economic "meltdown."

I don't attempt to know the right actions but instead to be able to ask the right questions. We should neither be afraid to act or act from fear.

Again I appeal to people to refrain from person attacks between now and election, stay with the issues and be certain of any claims or allegations.