The Dow plummeted. Let’s say that again: The Dow plummeted. So did the S&P. So did NASDAQ. What happened? We did the bailout. We were told by Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, President Bush, Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke that if we didn’t do the bailout, the stock market would plummet. Wall Street would collapse. The sky would fall, fire and brimstone would rain down, and life as we know it would come to a sudden and disastrous end. In fact, we had to do the deal by a week ago last Friday, or else. That deadline came and went as principled House Republicans stood against it because the hard-working, responsible, fiscally conservative taxpayers didn’t deserve to get screwed by the government in favor of a bunch of greedy cheaters. (Interestingly, 94 liberal Democrats voted no because they felt that $700 billion for Wall Street was too much unless we took a few hundred billion and earmarked it for their constituents — let’s just call them the pork caucus). At any rate, we woke up Saturday morning and the sky was still overhead. So after a week of “improving” the bailout bill (read: infused it with pork), Congress passed it last Friday. And the market went down. Immediately. We woke up Monday morning after a weekend of jitters and the market is downer and downing more. Americans were divided on the bailout. Those who paid their mortgages and their taxes (the vast majority of the American people) were against it. Those whose greed had finally caught up to them — homeowners who never should have been given a loan to buy bigger houses than they could afford; loan companies that got rich all the while knowing they shouldn’t have made the loans to the people who couldn’t afford them; Wall Street magnates, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives and investment bankers who got filthy rich by buying the bad loans and selling them as securities — were for the bailout. I think that pretty much says it all. The other people who were for the bailout were House and Senate Democrats who for over 10 years stood in the way of any tightening of the regulations on Fannie and Freddie — the root cause of this disaster. Don’t take my word for it. Just ask Bill Clinton. He wasted no time throwing the Dems under the bus on September 25 when he said on Good Morning America, “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” (Note to John McCain: Bill and Hill really want Barry to lose so that they can run against you or Sarah in 2012. Bill gave you a rhetorical club with which to beat your Democrat opponents over the head and you dropped it. Not too late to pick it up). Of course President Bush and his crack economic team, Hank and Ben, were for the bailout because they are incredibly arrogant people. The problem is that they are also incredibly wealthy people who have fabulously wealthy Wall Street friends who in fact were in need of the bailout. I mean, can you blame them? Who wants to lose their fabulous beachfront estate in South Hampton? Note to Hank and Ben: Fear not, you’ll still be on the guest list for all those Hampton lawn parties this summer.

So here we are, the American middle class, watching what little we have in our individual portfolios go into the toilet (yes, most of us do have some sort of retirement plan because we are smart enough to know that even if Social Security was going to be there for us when we retire, it wouldn’t be enough to cover the dog food). We know that rewarding bad behavior leads to more bad behavior. It’s like giving a puppy a treat after he pees on the rug or giving your teenager a car after the first time he comes home drunk. We, who actually raise our kids ourselves (meaning we don’t employ nannies to take care of the little darlings while we go off to our power jobs — although the free Spanish lessons would be nice) know something about personal responsibility and bearing the consequences of bad behavior. We who actually go to work every day without delusions of summers on the Vineyard with John and Teresa also know when we are getting screwed. And we are getting royally screwed right now. We join the Armed Forces and defend America while the other guys go off to Harvard Law. We go to Church on Sunday and thank God for what we have while the other guys are watching Meet the Press before heading out to the country-club brunch. We mostly want to be left alone by the elites of both parties and wish they’d all get their hands out of our pockets. We happily give as much of our money as we can afford to charities (unlike Sen. Biden who is actually cheaper than Al Gore — and that is no small accomplishment) but we resent the politicians coercing us to give our money to causes and programs that don’t work or that that offend us. We stopped watching the network news years ago because it ceased to be relevant to those of us who still love this country and believe that wanting to keep more of our hard-earned pay does not make us greedy, mean-spirited, or racist. We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice and insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity are getting sick and tired of always being asked to pay for the bad decisions and atrocious and possibly illegal behavior of others. We just became the owners of about a trillion dollars in bad debt in order to keep people in homes they couldn’t afford and Wall Street bankers in homes that only they can afford. And to add insult to injury, our property values will drop even more, destroying the equity in our homes that we the responsible, law abiding, financially conservative, taxpaying Americans looked to as our biggest asset. They told us we had to do the deal to save the economy. We did the deal. The economy is still tanking. Only now they have set a precedent that runs contrary to everything we have been taught about accepting consequences of bad behavior. Risk is a thing of the past. We have basically socialized the economy. No wonder the Dow plummets. – Mark Corallo is a principal at Corallo Comstock, Inc.