More than slightly depressing thoughts on economic crisis..

This week...

What a ride.

There’s a part of me that wishes I didn't care. I’m sure that the majority of Americans have no idea what is actually happening in the financial markets. Jon Stewart called the headlines "Big numbers attack three letter acronyms!" And, frankly, most may be better for it. I, on the other hand, have a dangerous amateur interest in economics, and have followed the story as best I can, trying to understand it.

I’m sure that, two or three years from now, there will be three well written books that explain the crisis from three totally different perspectives. One will decry the lack of regulation. One will decry the greed of the financial institutions. One will decry the sheer irresponsibility of the American homebuyers who signed all these loans.

Did you know that an FBI background check is required to be a notary public? And, every new home loan has to be notarized. Doesn’t this just spell out the depth of the fraud going on behind this whole thing? Every loan written had a signing session where a person and a notary sat down for an hour and signed papers saying that all sorts of things were true. And, they weren't.

So, surly we should all place blame soundly on the greedy people who obtained huge loans that they couldn't afford for homes that were grossly overvalued.

That category, I suppose, includes me. At least, to some extent. I bought a house that was hugely overvalued. But, I can make the payments. They’re big, but I can make them. Now, if this whole thing fails to recover by 2016, I’ll have to default, too.

And, if that time comes, I’ll swallow my losses. I knew, when I signed the papers, there was risk involved.

Damn these bailouts.

I understand the whole "too big to fail" idea. The whole system is based on confidence, right? So, we have to maintain it. And, so, regardless of the actions of the banking industry, we have to save it.

I get it. Really, I do.

But, it tastes horrible.

Hopefully, in retrospect, history will conclude that the lesser evil would have been to bail out the people. Had the treasury department, three months ago, started paying on defaulting loans, they could have upheld the system's integrity for less money. And, at the end of this whole thing, years from now, all the morally reprehensible stupid people would still be living in their houses. Instead, we're spending billions bailing out the lenders. And, at the end of this whole thing, years from now, the banks will own a lot of houses. And, a lot of people will be starting over.

The way I see it, a bailout is going to happen. So, either way, the government is protecting a select group from the consequences of their actions. We're incurring the so-called economic "moral hazard". At this point, it's a question utilitarian ethics. Which bailout practice would result in the most good for the most people? In that light, I think giving money to the banks is the wrong move.

Of course, to really put it in perspective gets depressing. For 4 to 6 trillion, we could have bought ourselves a national healthcare system, bailed out social security, bolstered national education to be the best on the planet, and, with the leftovers, made a pretty good dent on solving world hunger. Instead, we got two mortgage banks and an insurance company.

Bad deal?