I need a bailout for my Beemer

Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke, are you listening? Here’s the thing: I need a bailout for my BMW. You see, when I bought it, the price was high, but the economy was good. I got a good interest rate, and the money worked. But now the price of my BMW has - (gasp!) - gone down! This means I’m going to lose money! This is simply not acceptable.

Nevermind the fact that, when things were good, I yelled from the rooftops that government needed to stay out of my business! Less regulation! Less oversight! Leave me alone, I’ve got everything under control, and you’re just getting in the way.

But assets aren’t supposed to go down! That’s completely crazy. I know, I know, “what goes up, must come down,” but the idiot that came up with that phrase obviously wasn’t schooled in modern portfolio theory or Keynesian economics. After all, we live in an advanced, New Era economy, where the Federal Reserve can create money and credit to ensure we not only have the things we need, but every possible thing we want or think we want too.

So when I heard about the $700 billion you’re offering, I’d like to request some of that too.  I don’t have much - just a few thousand here or there - but it would certainly improve my mood.  And looking at the bailout, it seems like a decent deal.  You take over all the payments, and I still get to keep my BMW.  So my payments go to $0 - which means I can start making more deals right away - and somebody else pays off my BMW while I still get to drive it around.  Thinking about it, I guess in hindsight I really should have bought two, rather than worrying about whether I could make the payments.

Just FYI, in the future, if you could just let us know ahead of time that we didn’t have to worry about the consequences of our actions, that would be a big help.

Anyways, I’m sure you guys are busy, so I’ll let you go.  But thanks for picking up the tab, I really didn’t want to have to pay for my own decisions, that would have totally bummed me out.