The whole corporate bailout thing happening in the US and now Australia really pisses me off. So I was glad they published my letter to the editor of the Courier Mail today.

The whole bail out situation smells fishy to me:

“It’s not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number.”

- A Treasury spokeswoman tells Forbes.com on how they came up with US 700 billion dollars as the bail out figure.

I guess that’s how Wayne Swan came up with his four billion dollar figure to “boost competition in the mortgage market”.

Mark Stacey of Sorrento in WA put it really well in today’s Australian newspaper when he said:

It is sad to see the major political parties squabbling to claim ownership over a bad idea, namely the use of taxpayers’ money to increase lending for mortgages. If lending money for house purchases was the route to a propserous and secure future, we’d already be in financial nirvana.

Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t get it. Wayne Swan doesn’t get it either. It’s all rather worrying.

Where else will the Washington Mutual equivalents in Australia get their money?

Update: Banks in Britain are having the same sort of financial problems and other banks there have “… refused to buy mortgage loans that customers are struggling to repay” (link), unlike the Australian Government who is proposing to do just that, with taxpayers’ funds nonetheless.

Update (2 Oct 2008): I sent PM Kevin Rudd a letter and got a standard response saying that they’ll take my opinions on board and send me an official response.