Dear Mr. President,
 
I am becoming more and more concerned over the proposed bail-out of the Wall Street real estate debacle. I think Washington D.C. is going around a blind corner at warp speed.

Where does it say in the Constitution, you always get to make money when you speculate on real estate?  I'm frustrated to see real estate speculators being bailed out. Why in the world should my tax dollars save these investors?

About ten years ago, our landlord was a local rental home investor. We paid $900 a month for a tiny house in rural Snohomish County. We listened to his tales of buying low and selling high, and marveled how he was able to easily get credit to keep buying more homes.

Then, we moved to a home closer to the I-5 corrider, and it was also owned by a bulk investor. This time, a group from California. The rent was $1,400 for an older, but larger home. They anticipated selling the home for at least a $100,000 profit over the next 24 months. Our mouths dropped open.

Currently, we are renting a home in Marysville, for $1,550, in a newer neighborhood, but today, our expenses are tremendously higher than before, and again, this investor owns lots of homes - while we're paying more than $500 a month just in gas to get to work and back. (Our ten+ year old car gets 28 mpg.)
 
Let's see. Investors left, right, and center, and all they have to do is fix a door, or a sink here and there, and their borrowed money will simply "grow" and pile up on their laps. They don't earn this; they simply wait for their credit to give them the opportunity to double their money on another quick home flip. They ask us to keep a look out for them for distressed homes in the neighborhood. They can always get the bank's credit, you see, for another "good real estate investment".
 
America's lending rules have changed to support the real estate investor, and the never ending cycle of higher and higher home prices they have created. Now Wall Street investors are screaming because home prices are falling. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them? Absolutely not!
 
Why don't we allow the market to correct prices on its' own? A federal buyout would continue to prop up the entire "invest and grow rich" mentality that has brought us here in the first place. This was their choice; if they invested, it was at their own risk. Now, after borrowing from the Federally supported commercial banking system to invest in real estate, we're watching our banking system sink along with the market prices they helped inflate. The social structure of America changed, as they made prices for family homes soar past all record levels. That was alright, we were all making money from rising real estate prices, right?
 
When I took a class years ago from the Seattle Federal Reserve, I learned how the Federal Reserve was created to protect depositors;  since the Great Depression, this has been the fudiciary responsibility of the American government. This new, proposed bail-out of securities traders and investors hurt by the real estate down turn should not become another fudiciary responsibility.
 
As a young girl attending elementary school in Seattle, our class was shown grainy black and white propaganda films from Soviet Russia, and watched Russian mothers turning their toddlers over to the State day-care. My fellow class members cried , watching those Russian children leaving their mother's arms for forced day-care.
 
Now families must juggle two jobs just to pay the rent. Day-care for American families is a requirement for most, and we use our tax dollars to make it more affordable for all. A stay at home Mother is a rarity; in fact, in the Seattle area, she's unusual. (Today's truly "smart" Seattle metro area women of course work outside of the home, of course only has 1.5 children, and those few replacement children are born after she's 32, of course. Another subject, I know.) To be able to afford a home on just one income is a dream increasingly out of reach for most Americans. Even an apartment on beginning wage's can't be done alone anymore. What has happened?
 
My "old fashioned" family of four (voting age) children is moving again, this time to the city of Everett, where we hope to save on our escalating gasoline bill. This home, a nice, older home, is $1,800 a month. Yes; it's again owned by a local real estate investor with several properties. Rents are going up, while our expectations of what we might someday buy is going down.
 
Listening to several investor landlords over the years, openly talking about making $100 to $150 thousand dollars *per home* over the space of the last 3-5 years is disquieting. Their greed has rewarded them handsomely, and they each consider themselves part of the "smart real estate investor" generation. You know - you've surely heard these "smart" types talk, who use homes as vehicles for churning out more private wealth. Private wealth, rescued by a public payout? It sounds upside down, doesn't it?
 
Those "borrowed profits" appeared because of the payroll deposits and small saving efforts of tax-paying families like mine. *This profit wasn't earned by the investors; it landed in their laps.* It's not money being invested in a family business. It's not named on a list from the Chamber of Commerce. It's money that was borrowed on credit, then recycled through several generations of documents as an investment security vehicle on Wall Street. THAT is why it failed, and that's why we should not race into an agreement to rescue them. This was not money invested in America; it was money multiplied on paper, because of the greedy behavior we've been taught to applaud.
 
Can this behavior keep America's economy strong into tomorrow? Clearly not. I believe we must let the open market bring real estate prices into line with incomes, and let's see "real estate investment wealth schemes" find a natural extinction; not federally protected status.
 
Home prices should follow real wages, as part of an economic system that allows those who work or invest their own money earn an honest reward. Raiding the family budget to protect the unearned personal wealth of investors and corporate America is wrong. Leveraging the American tax budget to bail out Wall Street is unconscionable.
 
Besides - my pocket's empty.
 
Sincerely,
 
A Seattle native
Snohomish County Resident
Washington State