With all the commotion in congress about bailouts, I figured I’d do my part and send congress an open letter with my thoughts on the situation.

Dear United States Congress:
Bailout is the obvious choice for word of the year, simply due to how many times the word has been looked up on its Web site. Apparently a lot of people want to know exactly what a bailout is, since you guys seem to be handing them out so freely in recent weeks. I know what a bailout is, and I think that I deserve one. To be honest, the financial sector situation is so confusing that I don’t know where to begin, but I’ll give it a shot. Under the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $700 billion is being allocated to financial firms that are in trouble because their securities, which are backed by mortgages that the home-owner can no longer afford, are in danger of failing. If these securities fail, the United States market will suffer from a shortage of liquidity, which is one of those fancy financial terms that I take to mean whether or not a business can meet its financial obligations. Let me just run down a list of what you’ve handed out so far, according to bailout.uslaw.com: $25 billion to J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo, $10 billion to Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, roughly $6.5 billion to U.S. Bancorp, and somewhere between $500 million and one billion dollars to five other banks, on top of paltry sums in the hundred of millions handed out to dozens of banks.

On top of all this cash you’re handing out, you sent the Big Three automakers home last week after they failed to tell you what you wanted in order to bail them out. It’s a good thing that Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent them home with a specific list of what to say next time (promise that the taxpayers will be repaid first, eliminate dividends and excessive corporate pay, form a plan to meet pension and healthcare requirements and meet federal fuel economy standards). It kind of makes me wish that when my parents shot down my requests for money or loan so I can go to Mexico on spring break, they’d at least send me a letter detailing exactly what I should say so I’ll be awarded the money next time.

So what’s the justification for all these bailouts? All we hear is that these bailouts are necessary for the health of the American economy. These firms are too big to fail. Some people might whisper about the cruel irony that the auto industry drove out the horse-carriage industry that employed blacksmiths, carpenters, stagecoach drivers and plenty of other Americans and was replaced by the very industry you are subsidizing now, but that’s hogwash. The typewriter and whale-oil industries should’ve been bailed out, too. I mean, those were real American jobs!

I am too big to fail. Think of all the jobs I help produce! When I go to the bar, I help employ bartenders, breweries, distilleries, farmers and, on the bad nights, the police. When I went on vacations, I spent my money at airlines, hotels, bars, restaurants and the list goes on. Never mind that responsible students have saved their money and foregone some expensive ventures in order to avoid debt, I’m going to graduate up to my eyeballs in debt! Raise taxes on the responsible people; at least they can afford it! My name is Ryan Broege, and I am a troubled asset, and I need your relief. Break me off a piece of that $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program; I deserve it!