The current bailout, if anything, proves that the American public is one huge "sucker," having been used by the powers-that-be in both the public and private sectors for whatever purposes serve their interests. The Freddie/Fannie debacle is at the bottom of the mess and this just about says it all since those agencies form a combine of public and private incest, with the illegitimate offspring being bankruptcy. The taxpayers – ordinary folks naively trusting both sectors – are hit with the loss, notwithstanding that hundreds of billions of bailout loot goes to the Chinese, the holders of immense proportions of American bad debt.
This, too, points to the problem. Why should the Chinese, who have experts of their own who should have knowledge of what’s been happening for years, especially since the democrats took over Congress in January 2007, get well at the expense of innocent Americans? If their experts let them down, then they should bite their own bullet – okay, they have, at least to an extent – and bail themselves out the best way they can. Last month, Treasury Secretary Paulson said, "We're not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people, different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market discipline that got us here." Not proud? Egad!
The folks in the private sector function on the basis of profit and greed. The elected officials and bureaucrats in government are supposed to function as protectors of the public welfare. Former Fannie Mae CEOs Johnson and Raines are representative of both groups, especially with regard to greed. They milked their institution for tens of millions of dollars, cooking the books and using the government agency as a tool to feed their greed. That they can escape prison for their thievery seems impossible, but both men played significant roles in Obama's campaign until they were called out publicly, so the notion that the democrat "good ol' boy network," especially with a soon-to-be-democrat attorney general, will make them pay for their perfidy is just that – a notion.
Folks expect the private sector operatives to steal them blind whenever they get the chance or can make the chance, but they should be able to have confidence in their elected officials to keep those operatives as honest as possible, both management and labor. This is the worst part and involves both political parties. Either the elected representatives in both the Senate and the House are in on the deals (much proof of that lately)…or, they are collectively dumb as a gourd…or both.
The pointers to the current crisis have been evident for a long while and public pronouncements referencing it have been all over the place. This means that the solons should have seen the handwriting on the wall long ago and prevented the crisis from happening. Instead, despite testimonies in hearings and all the rest, they stuck their heads in the sand and let what they thought (or at least hoped) were the good times roll on. The simple truth that there's no such thing as a "free lunch" never seemed to register, so they let the smooth operators run the nation's business into the ground.
This has happened positively since the democrats took over both houses of Congress in January 2006. Perhaps it's instructive to ponder that the best way to turn a nation into socialism is to bankrupt it first. Obama has already made it plain that he intends to redistribute the wealth from the most responsible citizens to the most irresponsible. This amounts to punishing those who make the system work by taking what they can earn and giving it away. This is not a cold-hearted statement, just a fact.
As a result, the government now owns parts of banks, lending agencies, mortgage institutions, automobile manufacturing (courtesy of the average John Doe and the pensioners), and the list will go on as the operators see what they consider a good thing. The elected officials, who, along with Obama, clamor for a socialistic system are in the majority now and in a position to make the country the primary owner of everything. The fat cats don't think they have to worry about this approach because they are immunized through having plenty of everything, while the proletariat can eat cake.
The fat cats may err. The Olde Europe model is not likely to work in this country, not least because individualism is too strong a concept for the middle class, especially, to forfeit. This is ironic because Obama/Biden made their play to the middle class, with the notion clearly in mind to scam it just like the "shrewd" mortgage-makers didn't explain to their victims just how they could not actually afford the property they were letting them buy – and scamming the whole system in the process to feed their greed.
So…does Obama intend to keep printing money? Does he mean to extort the wealthy (whoever that is) or the high wage-earners, who can loophole the government to shreds, and reduce taxes on 95% of the population when 38% will pay no taxes in 2009 anyway? How does that work – monthly stimulus checks, perhaps? Perhaps he means to cream the top five percent and cut income taxes for the 62% who actually will pay taxes…minus that five percent, of course. That's wealth redistribution, but don't tell that to the 38%. They don't get a cut…they don't pay anyway, and they won't get a stimulus, either. Voodoo economics? Naw…socialism!
The founding fathers (even considering their own faults) would flip in their graves if they could see this pie-in-the-sky gang in operation. The stock market is in the tank and will stay there because Obama has made it plain that profit is bad and will soon indicate that the guilty will not pay.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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