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BAILOUT ISSUE A WORRY ON LOCAL MINDS

By Erin France/Of the Commercial staff
Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:45 AM CDT

Ask Eddie Sensat about his upcoming retirement and he’ll tell you straight.

“I’m moving to Mexico,” said the administer of religious services at the Arkansas Department of Correction.

It’s not that Sensat, after 23 years in the Navy, found his Shangri-La in Mexico: It’s the fact he wants to keep his current lifestyle intact, something which would require another job after retirement in the United States.

He said he decided to live abroad before the current U.S. economic crisis, but that it still is deeply troubling.

“I’m extremely concerned about what the bottom line’s going to be,” he said. And the Bush administration-backed proposal for $700 billion to bail out firms deep in the mortgage muck, does little to assuage his worry, he said.

“There’s more questions than there are answers with the plan,” he said.

The proposed measure would allow the government to take on the risky mortgage debts owed by banks nationwide. The response comes after the demise of the investment bank Leh-man Brothers, and the federal takeover of insurance company American International Group Inc., (AIG) and mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Since then, Wall Street stock prices have dipped erratically as investors struggle to find firm footing.

Bill Baugh, a system engineer for the Washington Group at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, said he was too scared to look at his investment portfolio.

“I’ve heard that the best thing to do is leave it alone,” he said.

Baugh just turned 50 and said he would like to retire within the next 10 years.

He’d like to see more options when it comes to dealing with the economy, he said, instead of the $700 billion bailout.

“I hate it,” he said. “How does our government recoup that?”

Most of the debt will be recouped through taxpayers, a fact that stopped at least one diner from commenting on the story during Sno-White Grill’s lunchtime rush Wednesday.

Jimmy Doss, a supervisor at the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, said he would like to see the federal government sell off the real assets and give the profits to the American people.

“It’s been getting tougher and tougher out there,” Dell Doss, his wife, said. “The money is not going to the people — it’s going to the politicians.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson agreed Wednesday to limit the pay packages of distressed companies’ executives.

Neither said they have much faith in politicians and their promises to fix the economy’s problems.

Jimmy Doss said the only person who might have been able to make a change was Hillary Clinton.

“I would have definitely voted for that woman,” he said. “I think she could have made a change.

“If something don’t happen,” Dell Doss said, “it’s going to be a bad place to live in.”

“Worse,” Jimmy Doss added.

“Worse,” Dell Doss agreed.

Sensat, though his move to Mexico comes at a prime time, said he will retain his citizenship, with all the rights and taxpaying responsibilities that comes with it.

He still will fuel the bailout with his dollars, but with a lower cost of living in his Mexican paradise, it won’t do as much damage.

“Greed has just ruined the economy,” he said. “Whoever gets elected is going to have a mess to deal with.”

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