The Daily Show clip is missing the real point: The government shouldn't be bailing out
anyone!
It starts off by attacking Santelli, basically because he's on Wall Street and has "critically reported" on the big corporate bailouts, as though he somehow was in support of those, but not these. Since the corporate bailouts weren't the topic of discussion in his clip (nor did the Daily Show offer any evidence of his supporting them in his other reporting), it seems they just wanted to use the Santelli story as a starting point for a "Corporations Are Bad (and if we're bailing them out, how can we justify denying the little guy?)" rant.
I'm not supporting the corporate bailouts
in the slightest, but I think you can draw a distinction between them and the proposed individual mortgage aid that Santelli was angry about. In justifying propping up the failed businesses, the government argued the bailouts were necessary because the banks were "too big to fail," that their collapse would bring about some kind of global financial apocalypse. Giving them money is bailing out an institution; it has employees, customers, investors, and (corporate shenanigans aside) the money doesn't go directly into anyone's pocket. But government money to save someone's mortgage only really aids that individual and his family. Regardless of the reason he can't keep up with his payments, that kind of bailout is just about the most blatant and transparent form of income redistribution conceivable, and that level of directness has a tendency to rub many people the wrong way (hence why a good politician speaks in vague platitudes to massage the message).
What Jon Stewart's rant
does illustrate, if unintentionally, is the exact kind of moral hazard that people have been warning about since the bailouts began. When he said about 30 seconds in, "...but when it looked like the President wanted a
SMALL percentage of that money to go to
ACTUAL HOMEOWNERS...," the implication he created was that in the face of all the billions being given away left and right to big companies, anyone expressing outrage at using a tiny amount of it for suffering individuals is immoral and hypocritical. Put another way, if we are helping these guys out, how can you refuse to help these others? It's a valid moral hazard and a major reason the government should not have started the bailouts in the first place.
You think the homeowners are feeling the hazard when the government doesn't help them (like comparing apples to oranges), imagine how the people at Lehman must feel! (like comparing apples to Roma apples)
HolyJaw wrote:In the end, everything Endyss said.