An eager offer to participate in the new economy
by David Sarasohn, The Oregonian

Monday September 22, 2008, 4:40 PM

Somewhere, deep in the innards of my house, is an old microwave oven. Buying it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I've concluded that it doesn't brown well, heats unevenly and tends to emit an unsettling screech when it's unhappy.

In fact, I've decided it was just a bad investment.

So I've been trying to get in touch with the Bush Treasury Department, to see if it would like to take the microwave off my hands. I'm not greedy; I'll make them a deal.

That's the clear implications of the details of the proposed $700 billion buyout now on the table. Originally, this was supposed to be a government bailout of a mismanaged mortgage situation, trying to keep the housing market from collapsing entirely. This would be ambitious -- and unprecedented -- enough, but it seems that the companies have requested, and the administration agreed, to include other dubious holdings, such as car loans and credit card debt.

This is now not just a housing support. It's a Wall Street yard sale.

These are, of course, the credit cards that credit card companies were sending out in waves to any address they could find, including pets and dead people, for years, while they've relocated to states that let them charge 30 percent interest. In 2005, facing waves of unpaid obligations, they got Congress to toughen the bankruptcy laws, talking solemnly about the sacredness of contract, although a huge number of the defaults were driven by medical disasters.

Now, that congressional fix being insufficient, they want the taxpayers to buy their worthless credit card debt. After all, just like nobody could have imagined that giving mortgages to people without incomes would be a bad idea, who would have suspected that covering the country with credit card offers could create a problem?

You can see why they think they deserve relief from their investment.

Which gets me back to my microwave.

I bought it in good faith, seeking to advance the market stimulate the economy. But its temperature just didn't rise as high and fast as I'd projected, and I've had to reclassify it on my books. (Actually, it's now reclassified underneath several boxes of my books.) It's now, in fact, a non-performing asset, which right now raises one immediate question:

Would the secretary like to pick it up, or should I send it?

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