The Bailout and You

By Tim Gehret
Reporter
Published: October 3, 2008

The bailout plan is 451 pages full of tax breaks and earmarks for special interests groups.

That means the tab goes to the taxpayer. A fact that probably has a lot of you wondering where you’ll get hit first.

At 83 Emerson Read has been a real estate broker for 61 years and has lived through just about everything.

“I remember the depression and roosevelt I remember when he got elected.”

He says the biggest mistake then people panicked. Which is why now he offers this advice:

“What do we need to do. You need to go about your business as if nothing was happening.”

The reason he says is that the 451 page package is way over most of our heads.

“This is very general. Evidently this is authorization. The first bill was less than 200 pages and i had a copy of that and it was very specific.”

What it boils down to is that the government loans money to the people that make the things we use to help them get back on their feet. Those businesses also get a tax break. What happens is that the government goes further in the hole. 11.3 trillion dollars to be exact.

Who fills that hole? You do.

“That’s right the taxpayers,” says Read. How are we going to pay for it? “In debt that maybe your children are going to have to pay off.”

That means higher taxes and higher interest rates but it won’t be anything we haven’t seen before.