Bernanke Bailout dow jones money crisis Lehman probe

I admit that I don’t have much of a brain when it comes to finance and economics; but I’m trying to learn what I can and to keep up with the names and stories that are making US and world finance and economics headline news. Everybody and their grandmother knows that there’s an economic crisis. The news media have been talking about nothing else; but I doubt I’m the only person out here who’s still wondering exactly what is really going on and how it affects the little people if it affects the little people at all.

In my ignorance what seems to be going on is that the banks and companies that send us threatening letters when we can’t pay our bills, who hire collection people to harass us and our children every day, have found themselves in trouble and have gone to the government crying and seeking help. When we cry to them they have no compassion. They send sheriffs to serve us. They take us to court. “You shouldn’t have borrowed if you knew you might run into a situation where you can’t pay”, they tell us.

When they cry they get billions of dollars to bail them out of their crisis; but like I said there’s much I don’t understand. Maybe it does affect the little guy somehow. Maybe if a banks fails and you have money in that bank you lose your money or something like that. Maybe that’s why the goverment came to the rescue – to protect the money of all the innocent people who would have lost their life savings trusting it all to the assumed security of a bank.

Image: Smart Woman by stephen leung via Flickr