Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

With the crash of the financial sector last week the U.S. economy is facing extreme danger. Lehman Brothers melted to the ground with the lack of capital to continue operations. AIG was facing the same fate until the government bailed them out by giving them around $85 billion.Merrill Lynch was potentially looking at the same fate as Lehman Brothers until Bank of America swooped in and bought them for $50 billion in stock. Banks across the country are struggling, several banks have already failed, and many are on the brink of failure due to the mass amounts of home foreclosures that are causing billions of dollars of losses. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government recently in hopes of preventing their failure. They hold nearly 50% of all mortgages in the United States.

So what does all this mean? Are we headed for the next great depression, are people going to start losing jobs in mass numbers, and is the standard of living for most Americans going to go down? These are just a few of the questions many Americans are asking these days. People around the globe are asking these questions too. Our economy is facing an extreme melt down that will affect everyone if something is not done to stop it.

Have you heard of the government’s $700 billion bailout package? Most people have and most people have an opinion on the matter, which they should. There is one major problem though most of the people that vocally state their opinion don’t have the slightest clue what is at stake. They just know that they don’t want to be spending there hard earned money to bailout wall street and the financial sector because they weren’t part of the problem.

Let’s stop here and think for a second. Does the majority of Americans have a job or own a business? Yes! Does the majority of Americans have a car that they make payments on or made payments on? Yes! Do a large number of Americans have a mortgage? Yes! Does the majority of Americans own a credit card? Yes!

Ok so now let’s take a look at what could potentially happen to our economy and your way of life if something is not done to help stop the economy from burning to the ground. It starts all the way at the top and it will affect most everyone all the way down to the bottom.

With banks not willing to loan money because the risk is to high businesses that rely on that money to operate and pay there employees will fail. People will start to lose jobs at alarming rates. Without the means to make money people will not be able to spend money to make their car payment, there mortgage, their food, their clothes, etc…. This would result in more businesses not making enough money to operate and pay their employees which means more people lose their jobs. Businesses would not be able to obtain financing to operate and people would not be able to get loans to buy homes or cars. We are staring at the next great depression straight in the face. If people do not realize this they are living in fantasy land.

It’s really easy to complain about things such as high energy costs and high food prices. Yeah high gas prices suck for most everyone. Yeah people are loses jobs at an alarming rate. Complaining about something is not going to fix it. We all need to help be part of solution even if we had nothing to do with the cause of the problem because the problem will affect everyone if nothing is done. If the $700 billion bailout is our best option then we all need to support it whether we like it or not.