Does anyone else have the feeling we’ve been down this road before? The government wanted to make homes more available to those who couldn’t afford them, so they pushed banks to accept subprime mortgages. Now the government wants to make cars available to those who can’t afford them, so they’re pushing “Cash for Clunkers.”
The availability of home loans caused the price of homes to soar. Now “Cash for Clunkers” is raising the price of cars. In the end, the subprime mortgage loans were unsustainable and the bank crisis occurred. So dare I ask, how sustainable is “Cash for Clunkers”? Like those people who lost their homes during the mortgage crisis, how many people “cashing in” their clunkers will be losing their new cars? What will they do when no affordable “clunkers” are available? Like the banks that went out of business, how many car dealerships will go out of business when the “cash” is cut off?
We the people will be paying our entire lives to bail out the banks. How much are we the people expected to spend bailing out the car dealerships? Or is the government planning on dealing cars?
Congress just approved the continuation of the “Cash for Clunkers” program, so we the people will continue to pay for cars that are purposely being disabled. Does this make any economic sense to anyone? Congress is using our hard earned money to buy clunkers and purposely making them junkers!
Janine Erickson
Snohomish
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