OK, try again. Kindly note that this poll is in separate sections.

Here is the first poll regarding the GM bail-out.

The first three items allow you to vote on what kind of bail-out should be provided, if any. Please vote for only one of the three:

1. No bail-out of any kind
2. Bail-out should be a loan
3. Bail-out should be a "gift"

The next poll allows you to vote for conditions you would apply to the bail-out.

One big problem with taking bail out money from the government (besides the obvious fact that the money could be going to funding college students and fixing the million things wrong with our country) even though it is a loan is that it's just printed from thin air by the Fed, and required to be paid back with interest. So in order for that money to be paid back the principle (which will be printed from thin air) with interest (which wasn't), GM will have to get the interest from you and me, who gets our money from the Fed (because that's the only source of money). So we perpetuate this cycle of borrowing money from the Fed which ends up as our National Debt, and now the government has to pay this money back with interest, and the only way to get the money to pay back the principle (the only money created by the Fed) plus the interest (which isn't yet created) is by having the Fed print more money. And the American dollar spirals farther and farther towards nothingness. Unless one day we just decide to arbitrarily change what our money is worth, kind of like all the European countries did, who's Franc and Deutchmarks and stuff used to be worth penny's on the dollar, are now worth 1.4 dollars (the Euro). That must be nice.

Really I don't understand how it all works. But I just know that things are screwed up.

It is rather interesting we're trillions in the hole but we can cough up $700B to bail out a bunch of corporations who made bad bets.

I'll tell you what really chaps my hide and seriously pisses me off: the local ABC TV station aired a piece on Tuesday of this week I think, showing a slew of AIG executives wining and dining themselves at a mega resort in Arizona, fancy restaurants, limos, the whole enchilada, AGAIN, and the day after the gov't agreed to a bigger bailout package of loans for that sorry loser of a company.

I'm so mad over that I can't even describe it.

At least it was finally given some national spotlight. I read about that weeks ago on comcast.net and didn't see anything in the real news. If you're blood is boiling about that, the banks that got the $700 billion are paying their executives something like $150 billion in bonuses for 2008 and there's nothing anyone can do about it because it wasn't written in the bail out that they couldn't. The bail out addressed severance packages for those execs being fired due to the melt down they caused, so what do the banks do? They just keep the execs and give them bonuses. Merril Lynch (who hasn't made a cent in over a year and a half and is now merging with Bank of America because of it) alone has set aside $6.7 billion for bonuses. Meanwhile, the credit situation hasn't gotten any better. I found this today, it explains it pretty well.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_598168.html

I should probably warn you to sit down before reading it and put on some boxing gloves in case you get the sudden urge to punch the wall.

Except nothing forces you or anybody else to use the FED's money... it is perfectly legal to barter and trade ... or even print your own money... it is only illegal to print money that looks like the FED's money...

But the major benefit of the FED's money is that it is nearly universal and is accepted just about anywhere in the U.S. ... if you want to trade some carrots you grew for your 1 gallon of gas ... you might have a much harder time with making that work.

If even 1 red cent of bailout money goes to executive bonuses I call that a national disgrace.

Never mind the government allowing that, I'm getting used to poor judgment from them, how could someone who ran a business into the ground accept a bonus? Those executives are strangers to even the most basic sense of shame and decency.

Very sad situation.