[wind_magic]

Candidates are all talking mortgage bailout, and this morning under my hotel room door I see U.S. today talking about the distress that home owners have been feeling over mortgages. So, I would like to propose a competing plan.

Instead of taking away money from people who didn't speculate on home prices in the cities to give to people who did, rewarding irresponsibility, I propose a different approach. I propose that anyone who is upset for home owners and who is worried for them consider visiting the markets via their broker to take a look at mortgage backed securities. Numerous corporate bonds by companies such as Countrywide and many others are selling at rates that have tremendous yields even over the relatively short term. Since nobody has been willing to buy the bonds for fear that home owners won't pay their mortgages these bonds are selling at a big discount. The risk is, of course, great, and you could lose your principal, but the rewards look good too. Since defaulting borrowers have forced yields up it might also be worth looking into "F", "GMAC", and other car manufacturer bonds that are used to loan money to car buyers. Yes, repossessions are also a big problem now, so it might be time for the country to step in and help companies who loan money to car buyers. These bonds too are paying high yields now because of the perceived default risk.

This proposal has a lot of merits that do not exist in existing bailout proposals such as 1) not penalizing people who didn't borrow money to pay for things that can't afford, 2) rewarding people who want to help during this terrible crisis that is apparently affecting so many, 3) true fairness, people who have worked hard to save up money won't just have it taken away from them to give to people who over-extended themselves, 4) opportunity, it helps preserve the opportunity for people to borrow for cars and houses by stimulating the market for their debt, 5) it gives existing homeowners the opportunity to refinance their debt to a fixed price mortgage by creating a market for that debt, 6) market rates for the bonds reflect the anxiety about them and reward people who actually deserve to have a reward, 7) it gives people a chance to keep going to work to pay the interest on their debts, 8) giving Presidential candidates the opportunity to look like they are responsible and not just pandering, 9) helping to encourage people not to just live for today but to think about tomorrow, 10) encouraging participation in the U.S. capital markets which teaches the merits of investment and return on risk, etc, etc, etc. The potential benefits to this plan are many, too many to go into in this humble proposal.

I hope that the people of America will join me in supporting this important proposal and to stop competing plans which basically just rip people off who have worked hard and made good decisions. The American debt markets need you! [insert picture of bond trader dressed in flag pointing at you].

[yes, this is sarcasm and not actually an offer to sell or buy securities, not actual advice on investing in the markets, etc, etc, buyer beware, risk of loss, blah blah blah, these bonds are known to cause cancer in the state of california, etc].