Quick Take on Finance/Economy/Politics

I read an article about the Tea Parties that are happening around the country.  I still don’t know the details but commenting on a general remark: I disagree with tax increase to bail out banks and other companies who had bad businesses.  The banks should know better than to give out interest-only loans.  Come one!  Even before I studied MBA, I already knew that interest-only loans sound very “suspicious”.  Interest-only loans is like giving money to the bank for a few years.  The person is not even paying any part of the principle!  Granted, I have a CPA Dad and an engineering background, so it may just be “natural” for me to sense “suspicious activity”.

Auto companies… well, if you haven’t been improving your cars to stay competitive, maybe you should deserve to go bankrupt.  Yes, it will be a huge domino effect if a whole auto company shuts down but believe me, the economy will survive.  We still need cars, right?  It’s a necessity in the U.S. and in many other countries.  Other auto companies will need to buy parts, although not necessary the same parts.

Good move by Chase.  I feel very, very sorry for Washington Mutual.  Really!  It had a good business running and it had awesome ideas and practices.  I walked into the branch and I knew immediately it had the best branch customer service than any other banks I had been to.  I don’t know the details, but I felt that it was just unlucky.  Why else so many other big banks who also offered stupid loans survived?  Chase was really smart to buy it.  Just driving by, Washington Mutual (WM) has nearly as many branches as Bank of America.  Buying WM is the fastest way to grow Chase’s prominence in California.  Plus, all those clients who took advantage of the WM heavily advertised “Free Checking”?  Chase saved a lot of marketing cost.  I feel so, so, so sad for WM… partly because I had stocks in them.  sniff… sniff… sniff…

And… Yes, I do believe government should have little or no interference with the market.  Market stabilizes itself eventually.  Government interference actually prolongs this process.  With super geniuses in the government, they should already know where the market is heading.  If there’s any government interference, it should be an act to speed up to the worse.  Believe me… if we dive for the worse, then government comes to the rescue… it looks a lot more heroic for the government.

Oh, I really don’t care how much the millionaires are making so there’s no need to tell me how much the Obamas made last year.  Even if the millionaires pay a flat income tax, they still get to keep plenty of their hard-earned money.  Of course, they wouldn’t pay the “flat income tax” as they hire excellent accountant to reduce their income tax so much that they may actually get money back!  =)

As a person who saved years of money for a dream house, I really feel unfair to have to pay more tax to bail-out bad companies.  It was really hard to save those money!  No luxury, no nothing  for many years.  I had to keep transferring money from account to account to get the best interest rate when the interest rate was so low!  I did the same when interest rate went up.  It was a big hassle.  I had to make risky runs at the stocks to earn money too.  I paid income taxes to those earnings and the dividends.  As most of you know, I’m house hunting.  Guess what I heard from Hubby?  Some of the “homeowners” (banks or construction company, etc.) who got bailout money from the government and stuff actually demolish the houses to keep the house prices “up”.  So, once they got bailout money for the “house”, they immediately destroy the house so that it’s not on the market any more.  Also, many houses are in default but the banks delay the process of default and foreclosure so that it won’t flood the market with houses.  Again, a way to keep the house prices “up”.  Oh well… what can a lower-middle-income class citizen do except to rant on her blog?