I'm pretty upset about this talk of bailout for a very selfish reason. I have been planning for, and waiting for a financial meltdown, and I expected to benefit greatly by it. That's the nature of the free market, isn't it?
I've never been wealthy; I have a good education and am a professional, but I'm still just a working stiff. It hasn't been easy for my family to get by, especially since we live in Southern California, but I have been watching what has been going on for years, and I knew that there would come a time when the ridiculous run-up in housing prices that has kept me and others like me poor would eventually end, and end badly for some people.
I also knew that if the financial markets were depending on an endless appreciation in home prices for growth that when the housing bubble burst the markets would go down with the bubble.
In preparation for such an eventuality, I made several moves that I believed would be in my family's best interest. We sacrificed and eliminated our credit card debt. We limited consumption of non-essential items, saved as much as we could, and put our savings into hard assets that have been looking pretty good lately. We are ready to "cash in" when the time is right, and if things continue as they are, the time was going to be coming soon.
So now just as the "game" seems to be looking good for someone who did what I did, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve want to change the game entirely. In other words, we have a bunch of people who have been playing really hardball Monopoly: they start mortgaging every property they have to ammass as many properties, houses, and hotels as they can, even before they've passed GO for the first time, and they may wipe everyone out and win within a half hour. This time however, their gambles didn't pay off and they are about to be wiped out themselves because they cant even pay the rent for a night's stay on Baltic Avenue. Their solution is to flip the board over.
I don't think it's particularly fair to those of us who hold the deed to Baltic Avenue. Why should any plan seek to limit the upside for those who are ready to get into the market now?
You can call me a vulture if you want, but I don't think I am. I played by the rules of the game as I understood it, and now when it's about to be my turn, I may not get one. This is supposed to be the land of opportunity, and I see one. It should not be taken away.