I was reading my Sunday must-read (Frank Rich) and he had an interesting aside that caught my eye:
As Wall Street titans grabbed bonuses based on illusory, short-term paper profits, so regular Americans took on all kinds of debt wildly disproportionate to their assets and income. The nearly $1 trillion in unpaid credit-card balances is now on deck to be the next big crash.
Which links to this article at the Washington Independent.
"Nearly $1 trillion?" Add up everyone's credit card debt, and it's not even one trillion?
That used to sound like a lot of money, but didn't we just vote to give that much away to the banks? And aren't they just sitting on it?
You want a bailout that works? Then let's just have the government pay this off to write down everyone's credit card debt.
Seriously, is there a reason not to do this?
Sure people ran up their credit card bills. And the banks made really stupid investments that crippled the world economy and paid themselves bonuses for it. Tell me who better deserves a bailout?
You want to get people spending again? You want to get bad debt off of the banks' balance sheets?
You want to get people out from under cripping monthly payments and usurious interest rates? and deceptive billing practices and abusive charges and late fees?
You want to make it easier for people to afford to make their mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure?
Just saying.
Anyway, it would be nice if more learned members of the community could educate me as to why this isn't the most obvious solution.
Update: I'm really enjoying everyone's point of view on this. I'm assuming that there's going to be some kind of $1 trillion stimulus bill, so my thinking on this is how to best spend that money. I mean, tax cuts? Is that the most effective way of prodding spending, stopping foreclosures, helping the jobless, and unfreezing lending? Please continue...