Foolish bailout or economic rescue?

Since my day job is in finance, I too am going to weigh in on this behemoth of a topic. This is how sad it is folks, even rock bands are prone to discuss politics and economic status. Mama Cass is choking on a sandwich all over again. Don't worry though, this will be short.

After digesting what I've read and heard about the so-called "bailout" or "economic rescue package" as the proponents like to call it, I've come to a few conclusions and a few questions. First the questions:

Why is so hard to get all the facts? This obviously pertains to everything in life, but in this particular case, it really shouldn't be so hard. I mean, how can there possibly be such a division amongst people and politician about this bill? I may be naive, but this is something that should be either good for the economy or bad for it. Let me explain. If the banks really are in so much trouble, then can't people agree that something has to be done? Even if it is an added burden on the tax payers? Let's say Citigroup, the largest bank by assets, has too many credit default swaps on their books. Even if the accounting rules are changed from mark-to-market to more of a value-at-time-of-purchase system, they still are stuck with the mounting premium costs going out. With so much outgoing expenses, any entity runs the risk of becoming insolvent. So what if the big boys started drying up? Citi, JP Morgan, BofA. The government would HAVE to step in. So the bailout is just a minor form of the massive socialization that would eventually occur anyway.

But wait! The other side is that the banks aren't in that much trouble. Then the complete opposite is true and those that made those risky bets (most are now gone anyway) pay/paid the price and the larger, smarter firms dominate. Sure the market won't like it for a while, but I don't retire for another 30 years so I'm fine with waiting for the upturn. This is what I'm talking about when I say we should have the facts. Being that this whole plan is based upon saving banks by buying their POS assets, there should be complete transparency for us tax-payers to view their balance sheets and decide for ourselves if they run a risk of becoming insolvent. We have a song called "Insolvent." Check it out. When I saw "us tax-payers," I mean a committee of private, independent auditing firms hired to represent the public.

So there are the questions. My conclusion: The banks and Wall Street seem to have pulled a Donald Trump on the government. In "Art of the Deal" Donald tells about how he became so leveraged, that when confronted with an utter failure of his business, he approached the very banks that lent him the money in the first place and basically said, "either we both lose or we both win." They ended up lending him more money so they didn't have to write off so much bad debt to the Donald. We seem to be essentially dealing with the same thing here. The common folk are saying, "if my bakery goes under because I buy too much flour and it gets full of weevils, no one bails me out." Well, if you were the only bakery in the country and we would no longer have bread to sustain us, someone would bail you out. So unfortunately for us, without having all of the facts and perfectly transparent balance sheets, the banks/Wall Street are holding all the cards even after they've made all the risky bets they could.

So what to do? Well, I'm getting married in Vegas in two weeks and I tell you what: I'm pulling out my 401(k) money and putting it all on black and odd. If I lose, I'll just apply for government assistance.