The bailout, perhaps there is a better solution.

We are paying for a $700B bailout of private financial firms that made poor investments and then sold them to each other making billions of dollars in the process. When politicians in Washington were debating on how to bail out these companies, I was shocked that there was little discussion on how we (Americans) would benefit. All of us are paying for the bailout and we receive exactly what? I see no “upside” benefit to this investment and ALL the downside risk put onto my ever increasing list of bills and expenses. This seems criminal or at least morally reprehensible. Am I totally missing something?
Why don’t we give the banks our money (already decided) and create bailout treasury bonds which would represent each taxpayer’s investment in the companies? These private companies are using our money to fix their mistakes so we should receive some profits if it works. Each taxpayer would receive a Treasury stock in the now government controlled companies. We would not be able to pull money out of the companies for 2-5 years so that the market would be at a more stable position and possibly we could have gains on our investment. Individuals would be allowed to trade their bonds for cash but only if they were selling person to person or on a black market. This would insure that there was not a run on the bank further depleting the cash reserves when people received their investments. It would allow wealthier individuals to purchasing the securities from their communities and neighbors and trade cash to people who need it. Lower income tax paying families may not be interested in investing as much as buying groceries or paying off debt etc. The net effect would be a healthy stimulus check to the lower and middle class that would spend the cash now while at the same time wealthy individuals would be able to buy sound investments in our country.

Please feel free to refute or elaborate on this proposal in the hopes that we might all benefit from it. If you see merit in this plan, pass it on to your friends and family a congressman or state representative. If you don’t care, delete it.