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Debating a Financial Bailout
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Some 10 percent of gross federal tax receipts goes to interest on the national debt -- one dime out of every tax dollar. But that estimate was applicable when the projected federal deficit was half of what some experts now expect it to be.
Our country skates along on a federal credit-card economy, charging more and more to debt, much of which is owed to foreign creditors. Will federal debt interest in 2010 be 12 percent of tax receipts? Fifteen percent a couple of years later? Twenty percent for our children?
WILLIAM L. WITHUHN
Lanham
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Given the potential harm from more storied firms falling by the wayside, our government is right to seek to buy bad debt with the hope of stabilizing the situation. But we can't let this assistance reward bad behavior. New rules need to be put in place.
It took the Great Depression to bring in good regulations, some of which have lasted till today. If any good is to come of today's financial mess, it would be that we establish rules to prevent a recurrence.
STEVEN M. CLAYTON
