State of the Economy

I listened to President Bush's speech tonight regarding the state of the economy. I knew that things were bad, you'd have to live under a rock to not know that, but hearing the speech just drove the point home harder. I am not a Bush fan whatsoever but I thought that the speech was quite good. He, or should I say his speech writers (which is what I wanted to be at one point - a political speech writer), did an excellent job of explaining what is going on and how all of this happened.

I am angry that our country is in such a poor economical state. I'm angry that our taxes will almost certainly be raised so that the government will bail out financial institutions that participate in imprudent business practices. My favorite one is mortgage lending. Financial institutions lent billions of dollars to people for mortgages who couldn't afford them in the first place. This is not to say that that individual people who took out the loans are not responsible, too. I think the responsibility is 50/50.

The price of gasoline/oil is another crux of the problem with the economy. No one will ever be able to convince me that the high price of gas/oil is justified. I love the excuses that are used...the war, the hurricane, blah, blah, blah. Pretty soon it will be, "Oh, the sun is shining too brightly so let's raise the price of gas!"
What really makes me nuts is that oil companies' profits have been super huge lately. Hmmmm, so oil executives are getting profanely, disgustingly rich off of us using by using lame excuses. Where are the checks and balances?

Why should this surprise me? The oil executives, financial institution executives, and the government are all in bed together. I can see it now, there is a round table of these people laughing their butts off at us. In theory, our government is great. It reality, it stinks! The poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer and the middle class is being squeezed out. I truly am thankful for all that I have; I just don't appreciate that my family's livelihood is threatened because of the greed of a few people. It makes me sick, actually. Then again, that is the way the world works and it shouldn't surprise me. I'm so incredibly grateful that I believe God because without Him this world would make little sense to me!

Wow, I don't usually go off like this.