Wait, what?

I have no objection to paying taxes - they do help keep the national mechanism turning, after all - but when times are bad, money is tight, and the government is taking my hard-earned cash and giving it to large-scale investment banks, whose fleet of bankers make more in ten minutes than I make in three hours, I would just like a little insight into the details. However, details are just what have been missing.

In early October, Congress passed a $700 billion bailout bill authorizing the Fed to spend said amount to purchase troubled assets from struggling banks. Theoretically, doing so would have allowed the banks to borrow fresh capital, thereby jump-starting the banking and lending system. However, more than a month after the bill, unemployment is higher than ever, Wall Street continues to nosedive, recovering a little just this afternoon, and now the Fed has shifted its strategy. Did those $700 billion have any impact at all? It was as if, amidst the heightened Election excitement, the media just forgot to keep an eye out on just what the Fed had been up to. Now that the hype is over, we've turned back around to find the money gone and the economy not much better.

Now I understand that this bailout bill is, and was never intended to be, the end-all solve-all of the financial crisis. This economic turmoil will undoubtedly continue to swallow the economy at home and abroad for a while, and I can only hope that it blows over in the next year or so before I leave the fuzzy comforts of college and head out to join the working masses. What frustrates me, though, is when I feel like my tax money is going to waste. At a time when fear and uncertainty are what lie at the core of the problem, muddled bureaucratic dealings certainly do not help the situation. Tell us straight up what is going on - a little (or a lot) more transparency may go a long way.