Link: Gordon Brown hails £500 billion bank rescue plan – Telegraph.
I am no economist, so perhaps a reader can help with the questions I have today. If people are unwilling to lend, how does reducing interest rates help?
If our problem is that too many have borrowed too much, why are we trying to stimulate them into borrowing more?
If people (or local authorities) have chosen to deposit money with high-interest internet banks in obscure nations, why should taxpayers bail them out (paying them the high interest accumulated up to the point of default)?
Finally, how can one justify taking money (estimates vary between £1,000 and £10,000) from each and every person (actually much more than that from the more limited number of net taxpayers) to prop up private institutions which have miscalculated business risks? Yes, the taxpayers will obtain shares in the banks, but if they had wanted such shares, they could have bought them. Oddly enough, they haven’t chosen to do so. It may differ legally, but does government taking their money by force for the banks differ morally from the bankers holding them up at gunpoint?
It seems our democracy really is just two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner. Prudent debt-free British "sheep" must be eyeing the debt-laden wolves very nervously today. Now they know our democracy entitles them to do this, why would they ever stop?
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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