It Has to Hurt if it's to Heal

OR,
There's No Such Thing as an Organization That is Too Big to Let Fail ...
... what's more dangerous is helping a cancerous growth stay alive.

I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will disagree with this post, so feel free to rant-back in your comments...

Enough with the stupid Stimulus and Bailout packages already -- after the hundreds of Billions of dollars we've already thrown at the ailing economy, has it not gotten through someone/anyone's thick skull yet that bailouts are not going to solve the problem?

The economy doesn't want an extended recession, it just wants to "correct itself" -- or at least it would if we would quit screwing with bailouts.

Yes the economy had been "growing healthily" until the "banking crisis", but at least part of that growth was illusionary. What led to the "banking crisis" was years of bad loans and irresponsible debt being allowed. That was artificially propping up the continual rises in consumer spending, and consumer price indexes, and what not. If you keep loaning money to individuals/institutions who don't have the collateral or the means to pay it back, then you are artificially providing a means for them to "spend" and grow the economy with money they should not have had.

Eventually, that artificial growth would have imploded on itself, and the market would have gradually returned to the (slightly slower) growth rate that it should have had.

Yes, that implosion would have hurt. Yes, lots of people would have lost their jobs. Yes, corporations would have been shut down. BUT, then the healing would have started and the economy would right itself as everything slowly (maybe still a little painfully) recovered. Unfortunately, we decided that if we threw 700 Billion dollars at the problem, we could prohibit the implosion and save the world. But you know what? We needed that implosion! Those stupid stimulus packages are just gradually peeling the bandage off millimeter by millimeter instead of just ripping it off. And you know what, people are losing their jobs anyway, corporations are shutting down anyway -- it isn't helping anything, but we just keep dragging it on and on by wastefully throwing money at the organizations that should just be allowed to implode.

It we had not started down the road of stimulus packages and bailouts, we would have already seen the worst and already be on the road to recovery. At this point we have only postponed the inevitable. The economy can't even begin to heal itself yet, because we've haven't let it implode yet. We just keep playing with the gangrenous economic tissue and keep hoping we can halt the necrotic spread -- it's time to let that limb go!

We need to stop picking the scab on the economy, and let it heal.