There are 15 million Americans now unemployed. The foreclosure crisis has yet to settle with thousands currently fighting to keep their homes. Next month, close to 2 million Americans will have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Last month, nearly half a million already lost theirs. And now there have been reports that roughly half of all American children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood. For black children, that figure rises to 90 percent.
Yes, 90 percent of black children will be on food stamps during childhood.
All of this is what likely inspired economist and writer Katerina Alexandraki to propose this idea to Wall Street: Hand over your big bonuses to the people out there actually suffering.
Katerina calls the campaign, Bonus for Homes.
Via Business Week:
Katerina hopes to distribute the money to low-income earners and the unemployed., specifically folks who were victims of predatory lending or who are facing foreclosure. She describes it as “a private-sector initiative to address the anomaly that, while everyone, from top to bottom, public and private, is to blame for the financial crisis, some of us have fared much better than others.”
It’s a nice thought, but who honestly sees this happening?
This scenario is about as likely as Rush Limbaugh shining President Obama’s shoes.
These are people who spent millions to buy both political support for deregulation, which helped them create the very housing bubble and seedy lending practices that created its subsequent burst, along with the government aid needed to bail them out of it.
Does this sound like a group willing to take a temporary lapse for greed in order to appear like something remotely human? I’m doubtful.
Let’s have these people yanked out of their villas on Christmas Day and sent to jail instead – although that’s even less likely than Katerina’s scenario.
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Michael Arceneaux hails from Houston, lives in Harlem and praises Beyoncé’s name wherever he goes. Follow him on Twitter.