Rescue Bill table talk

Today:  I called my mortgage company, GMAC, to inquire into a line of credit to help cover expenses for our daughter’s second year in college (now!) and give us a head start for child #2 who will be heading to a University next September.  The voice on the other end of the phone said, “We are not offering any second mortgages right now.”  End of story.

Watching this unfold on a daily basis since 2006 has been a rather surreal experience.  I remember the day in October 2006 when I thought that the market may be shifting.  There weren’t as many people inquiring into the listing I was working on, not as many people attending the first open house.  Something was different.  Then August 2007 hit. 

And here we are in September 2008, another memorable month of events that seem fictional. 

To me, the proposed short term fix (a.k.a. bailout or rescue) was compounded by the fact that it wasn’t being presented to us in the right way.  It was presented as a “bailout of Wall Street”.  I thought Wall Street had pretty much imploded, so why was everyone (a.k.a. media and talking heads) talking as if Wall Street was some tangible thing.  Isn’t Wall Street the institutional companies that were the interface between investors (funds, municipalities, etc. and the banks)?  If Wall Street imploded, then the banks and lenders would be next, followed by the rest of us.

 Today Arnold Schwartznegger is quoted as saying (via this California Progress Report article):

“What was wrong right from the beginning was the way it was marketed… No one in America is interested in bailing out Wall Street..because those are the guys that are making the billions of dollars.  So who is going to help that?  But if you go and explain to people this is going to be a bailout for the ordinary citizens and for the businesses, small and large, for everyone, the economy and everyone will be affected all the way down to Main Street…”