I'm gonna wax poetic for a bit about the economy, so if you're sick to death of hearing about it please feel free to move along.  I've just had some thoughts stuck in my head in the last few days and I wanted to get them out.

As most of my readers should know by now, I work for at a not-for-profit credit union.  This does not, by any means, make me a financial expert.  If anything, it makes me realize how much I do NOT understand about the economy and finances.  During the housing boom, our credit union made the very wise choice not to get wrapped up in the sub-prime housing market.  There was certainly a lot of money to be made there at the time, but we didn't think it was a wise investment for our members.  Obviously, that was what we like to call in the business a Good Thing.  Times are tough for us right now - they are tough for everyone - but as of this point we are still profitable, we are still lending money, and while we are trying to cut spending as much as possible we are not laying off our employees or cutting member benefits.   We operated within our means, made wise investments, and had enough liquidity to continue growing our business.  The kind of things that any responsible business should do.

Then you have these giants of industry like AIG, who made all kinds of risky investments and manipulated the numbers to make it look like they were doing better than they really were.  Like many of the financial giants that are in trouble right now they made a shitload of crappy investments.  They were, however, "too big to fail" so the government loaned them $85 billion dollars.

A week later the top executives of the company took a vacation together that cost nearly half a million dollars. 

I've been thinking a lot about this bailout deal recently, and the more I think about it the more convinced I am that we are rewarding companies for doing stupid things and, as a result, punishing companies that did not.  Again, I'm not an economist - but let's theorize a moment about what happens if a big mortgage holding company goes under.  They get liquidated so that their creditors can get paid off, right?  So you have all these really crappy mortgages that could conceivably be bought up by other companies (like mine) for pennies on the dollar.  They could then re-negotiate the terms of the mortgage with the folks who are living in the houses for considerably less and still make a profit off them in the long run.  Sure, they are going to end up with some folks that still won't pay and they'll have to foreclose, but if you end up buying a $150 thousand dollar house for $25 thousand you can still sell it for $50 thousand and make a hefty profit, right?

I'm sure the issue is much more complex than that, but I'm still annoyed.  We did everything right as a company, and we're suffering.  These bastards fucked everyone over and they're off getting manicures and pedicures at a luxurious resort spa.  What they spent there that weekend could have been holiday bonuses for everyone in my company.

So it goes.