Bloomer residents critical of bailout
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By ROD STETZER
rod.stetzer@lee.net
Sunday, September 28, 2008 10:05 AM CDT
BLOOMER – Jim Delaney is upset. Ray Anderson is downright angry.
Neither man likes the proposed federal $700 billion bailout of financial companies that made bad loans. The men were surveyed by The Chippewa Herald on Friday morning.
Anderson is so mad he’d like to see a “none of the above” choice in the presidential ballot in November.
“I think ‘none of the above,’ would win,” Anderson said.
Delaney said he’s waiting for Congress to act on a bailout package. “That’s why they are in office,” he said.
But he doesn’t like the bailout one bit. He said the people who took out the mortgages could have hired attorneys to make sure they could afford the payments.
“If you didn’t know what you were signing, shame on you,” Delaney said.
Anderson says it was the lenders’ own fault and they should be stuck with the bill.
“If they were that dumb to a make a mistake, let them go under,” he said.
“Couldn’t they see what they were doing?”
Anderson said he’s tired of seeing executives of failing companies get big bonuses and stock options.
“I go to work. Nobody gives me a stock option,” said Anderson, who is a trucker.
Anderson said he moved to the Twin Cities, and he bought a modest house for $115,000. Ten years later, that same house sold for $270,000.
He said groups such as construction developers and real estate agents drove up housing prices to sky-high levels.
It’s time for a business operator to be elected to office because they understand how to live within their means, he said.
One woman who didn’t want to give her name said she opposed a bailout.
“People are losing their houses on mortgages,” she said. “So why shouldn’t they (the financial company executives) pay for their mistakes, too?”
A man in Bloomer who didn’t want to give his name said he could understand why a bailout was needed. But the man said it’s not a good idea to give money to people who caused the problem in the first place.
The Associated Press reported the rescue is designed to remove billions of dollars of bad mortgages and other now-toxic assets from the books of financial firms in a bid to free up lending.
The financial mess has led the credit market to tighten, making it more expensive to borrow money.
“It increases taxpayers’ costs, and that means the state and local governments’ ability to finance bonds for critical infrastructure is hampered,’’ Tom Dresslar, spokesman for California’s treasurer. “There’s a lot of craziness, a lot of irrationality out there.’’
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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jakesmema wrote on Oct 1, 2008 10:42 PM: