Bent Letter

[Frank Needham]

Excuse me everyone while I disturb your bliss with nasty request. I would like to request that everyone whose fancy it strikes as appropriate send this letter to each and every person they know with a request that they forward it to their own government reps. I am bent, make no bones about it.
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Allow me a few minutes of your precious time to express myself regarding the current crisis going on in the financial world. First of all, rational or not, I hold every representative of government and top business executive in a leadership position responsible for presiding over the time period in which this mess developed. That includes you, your peer on the other side of the aisle, the President, and especially those in executive business positions who presided over the making of these financial instruments called “derivatives”. Don’t tell me that nobody knew this might happen either. I read a shareholder’s letter from Berkshire Hathaway several years ago in which Warren Buffet warned of the “ticking time bomb” that derivatives are.

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. I do not understand anything about derivatives except that they have turned out to be something that threatens my very existence, my job, my family. To think that I have worked all my life and could now see it all threatened by this stupidity makes me seethe. To think that those of you who are in a position to know about such things allowed it to go on makes me seethe.

Now, from the same government who brought us Iraq, the energy crisis, the mortgage crisis, and the ensuing crash of it all, this is all being topped off by a demand that I pay for it all. Before going on, let me tell you a couple things loud and clear, I’m tired of paying for everyone else’s screw-ups! All my life I was informed that you should never spend more than twenty five percent of your monthly income on your dwelling costs and for years “you” have allowed people to hold mortgages that totaled more than fifty percent of their monthly gross income? What have you been doing there?

I am sick to death of being asked to pay for every idiot’s irresponsible actions that come down the pike so make no mistake about it, I want you and the top people involved to be held responsible for allowing this situation to develop and will do everything possible to make sure it happens that way. There may be no way out now but to go ahead and forge a bail out but this could have easily been avoided by leaders who acted responsibly. Lord only knows what those of you who call yourselves servants and leaders will allow to happen to the rest of us in your blindness and self-serving actions without blunt assessment by those of us whose life experience is from the ground up.

[George Mounce]

You've already paid your taxes this year like me I'm guessing, unfortunately the government has everyone by the balls on this one.

I feel you believe me, because I'm one of those people who bought a house he could afford and haven't been late on a payment for anything ever (ok maybe there was one time).

I disagree the mortgage crisis was brought on by the government, I think people who overspent themselves and banks willing to lend to people who would do so are the real culprits.

You already pay (via taxes) for medicare and medicaid and well, there are a whole bunch of idiots who kill themselves day in and day out. My mother is a diabetic educator and sees these people on a daily basis. They don't care what they are doing to themselves, and they honestly don't care your taxes are paying to keep them alive, no matter how miserable a life that is.

Believe me, I'm with you on the frustration, but what effect are you looking for as a result? The economy crashing to prove the point that a lot of people fucked up? I'd like to think thats a bad outcome and a much better one is available, even if it costs people something now.

[Garrett Smith]

The whole system is corrupt, run by criminal lawyers. I find it only mildly amusing that people actually still have any faith in the government to EVER do the right thing.

Greed is a bitch. Karma (or whatever you choose to call it) will get all of them.

[Frank Needham]

The only point is simply to make those who are supposed to be in responsible charge painfully aware that there is a memory out there and that those in responsible charge will be held so. If you don't feel you have some need to do so then you abdicate all to them and things will never change. I don't subscribe to the latter. I clearly state there is probably no other way out than the bail-out but that doesn't mean there can't be culprits held accountable. Oh, and I don't buy the theory that is all the fault of those who borrowed the money. After all, it was regulators and mortgage bankers who made it possible. My aim is to add the very large angry voice out there who doesn't want to sit still for this but knows it will happen anyway.

[Gant Grimes]

I am sick to death of being asked to pay for every idiot’s irresponsible actions that come down the pike so make no mistake about it, I want you and the top people involved to be held responsible for allowing this situation to develop and will do everything possible to make sure it happens that way.

Uhhh...do the idiots who act irresponsibly have any accountability?

Oh, and I don't buy the theory that is all the fault of those who borrowed the money.

Just read this. I guess not.