The economy continued its downward spiral Wednesday when the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve took a beating. Why? For the $85 billion-dollar bailout of AIG, an insurance company giant. Because of extremely poor communication, no one was informed of the plan, which of course created a lot of anger and mistrust--especially after the government recently decided NOT to bail out the Lehman Brothers bank.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday said the bailout plan must "protect the families that count on insurance" from AIG.
For those of us who don’t have insurance through AIG, we have a right to feel angry about this. Why should our tax money be used for this purpose?
"Once again the Fed has put the taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars to bail out an institution that put greed ahead of responsibility and used their good name to take risky bets that did not pay off," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, a member of the Senate Banking Committee. (Barrett)
Blame for this upset has been pinned on the Bush administration, which gives the Democrats more leverage in the campaign this year. All they have to do is point at who’s in office to dismiss the Republican ticket; more and more people are starting to believe that electing McCain would be asking for another four years of Bush.
The bailing out of AIG paired with the failure of the White House to speak about it bodes ill for this country. The government is using our tax money to take over bankrupt companies, the failure of AIG is just another symptom of a dying economy, and neither Obama nor McCain have shown significant strength in economics.
Barrett, Ted. " AIG bailout upsets Republican lawmakers." CNN.com. 17 Sep 2008. CNN. 9pm, 18 Sep 2008 <http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/aig.bailout.congress/index.html>.
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