Speaker Nancy Pelosi
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
Fax: 1 202 225-4188

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

I am a disabled physician. During the years I practiced medicine, I devoted myself to serving predominately low income working people, the elderly and the indigent who sought care at the University Medical Centers in Virginia and Kansas. I also served our veterans working with the Veterans Administration health system. I never pursued the financial rewards of private practice because I have always been relatively frugal and my want and need levels, with those of my family, have never been great. Service was always the paramount focus.

My disability arose from contracting a life-threatening, chronic infectious disease from one of my patients. After I was forced from practice by failing health, my family’s income was sustained only by virtue of the investments I had made in equities during my career. Now, many of those equities have been markedly deflated in value, and my family’s economic future is very uncertain. My son has just started college, and our savings for that have also been deflated.

This has all come about as a result of your failure in Congress to protect citizens from the machinations of Wall Street, even in the face of history and so many warnings from thoughtful economists and thoughtful members of the House and Senate. Now you ask me and every other American to absorb the cost of bailing out those whose malfeasance brought us to this disastrous moment.  But I have already paid my part in the form of market losses. Why should I have to pay twice?

I have 11,000 shares of virtually worthless Fannie Mae (FNM).  A year ago FNM was paying a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share and had a share price that hovered around $60.00. The last dividend, in August, was $0.05 and there will probably be no more. I can’t sell the stock as there is no real market for it. It closed yesterday for $1.66 -- less than 2.8 cents on the dollar.

I think that if the Government of the United States is going to bail out anyone, I should be near the front of the line. I would like you to buy out my nearly worthless portfolio at 40 or 50 cents on the dollar against my cost basis. The cost to the government would only be $350,000, a mere one-half of one-millionth part of the $700 Billion in largess your are intending for the Wall Street moguls whom you allowed to screw the American people out of their retirement assets.  It is only fair, and I will not require any tax breaks to go along with the refund. Just give me my money back and I’ll pay my taxes as I always have -- without complaint.

Sincerely.