Free Money . . .

Recent news has been buzzing about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) that has the government bailing out the financial sector for $700,000,000,000 of the taxpayers money. Lets take a look at some numbers.

The US resident population is currently at 305,262,958 as of today at 1:50 PM. [CENSUS Population Clock]
The US housing units estimate is currently approximately 130,000,000 homes. [CENSUS Housing Spreadsheet]

This means that they could be giving each household in the the US $5,384.61. Now while that does not look like much in the overall scheme of things, I sure could use the extra $5,400 for a lot of things such as bills, however on the other side of the coin, that means that every household would now share the debt of $5,400 a piece to "try" and bail out the financial services industry.

Colin Barr, a senior writer for Fortune Magazine said the following:

With the bailout proposal, Paulson seems to have abandoned hope of holding financial-sector players responsible for their mortgage-related missteps and is instead intent on distributing those losses to taxpayers.

Marc Heilweil, manager of the Marathon Value mutual fund in Atlanta, responded to this with:

"Paulson should have appeared for his 10 a.m. press conference in a Santa Claus suit. But these gifts aren't going to underprivileged children."

I agree that something needs to be done. I do not agree that we need to hand over $5,400 a household to the financial sector free of charge. We already have a huge debt and this is a chunk that should be paid back or come with huge penalties to those that caused the problem.

Ultimately, Paulson's assurance that "the ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this... program provides," does not confince me of the need to go into more debt. Spreading out the financial sector's mistakes to the rest of America will just add to the financial strain already felt by many Americans.

On the plus side, a very savvy and fun to listen to Money Guru had the following to say about the current situation.

How long will financial difficulties last?

How to Smile at the World . . .

After talking about Doom and Gloom for a few weeks, I figured I should hit the lighter side of things with how to smile at the world.

The Russian town of Chelyabinsk all got together, found out when the Google Earth satellite was going to pass over their town, and created the following group picture.

Looks like fun, and you could have a potluck after the event with the whole town. Ultimately, the map does not look like it has been updated quite yet, or maybe it has already been removed, however if you want to look through the town and find what I couldn't here is the Google Maps link for this town. [Pic and original information posted by SlashDot]