economic times.....

This piece of patriotic news from VP nominee, Joseph Biden:

Biden says it's 'patriotic' for wealthy to pay more in taxes:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden had this to say to correspondent Kate Snow earlier on ABC News' Good Morning America:
"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people." Those earning more than $250,000 a year will "pay more. ... It's time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in. Time to be part of the deal. Time to help get America out of the rut. And the way to do that is -- they're still going to pay less taxes than they did under Reagan."

I find the "take money" and "be patriotic" parts of the answer fascinating. A pure and simple redistribution of wealth. You got it, give it to me and I will put it in someone elses hands. This is socialistic at its core, and when you add the big government programs to be brought forward by the Democrats (with Pelosi and Reid in charge of the two chambers, which scares me more than Obama in the White House), but the huge amount of the electorate with their hands out looking for this "help" and agreeing with this policy, has me shaking my head. Would people rather look for help and punish those who do well, then helping themselves?

Chris had an excellent response to part of my post from yesterday concerning the financial / economic situation. I will state right now that I am not a "big economic" guy, in terms of large scale economics, so what I have been following, reading and learning about with regard to what is going on in newer to me. I follow economics, but it has never been at the top of my list. My practice with individual clients, deals in a more personal level, and with having to stay on top of the US tax code, keeps me busy enough, so some of this has escaped me, or I did not follow all the details in prior years.

While I agree with his point about about Fanny and Freddie, and how this should have never been allowed to get to where they were (and the future reader, Ron Paul), I disagree with his point about AIG. Again, not totally up on this, but from everything I have read, AIG is so spread out with its dealings that it needed to be "propped up". Now this came at a large price to AIG, as the interest rate on this $85 billion is over 11%, so they are looking hard and hopefully they will "find" the money from outside sources in the near future.

I also feel he might be a little pessimistic about this just delaying the inevitable. From what I am reading, and trying to absorb, a complete bailout out of all the firms would have done so, but by "picking and choosing" (probably another discussion), and letting some go, this should help to solidify the situation. Again, I could be reading it different then him, and some others, but that is what I am getting when I put the pieces together.

Bottom line for me is that I hate the government having to get involved, but my hopes are (being very optimistic) that this will help "right the ship", and we will learn from this, and put into place safeguards to allow our free capitalistic economy, while placing a few speed bumps in place to make sure this does not happen again.

Anyway, I really appreciate his input, and it has had me reading and trying to learn more about the different items.

- Sunday's "60 Minutes" will be split between the candidates.
- If I didn't have an Ipod already, I would get a Zune.
- At less than $100 a barrel, are people caring about oil prices?

Until the next time.....