Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Underregulation? More like socialism

For the last week or so, I've been listening to people tell me that the current financial “crisis” is the consequence of underregulation and the free market economy. That's plainly a load of excrement.

Put decades of regulation of the mortgage market requiring lenders to make loans to people that under traditional rules of qualification can't afford mortgages, just to meet some quotas for “helping poor people afford homes”. (What's wrong with renting anyway? It worked for me until I could afford to buy.)  Couple that with quasi-government “banks” that are exempt from taxes. Put corrupt congressional cronies in the executive positions of the so-called “banks”. Buy up bad debt. Allow those executives to get away with hiding the liabilities as assets, to manipulate their “earnings per share” and obtain bonuses many times in excess of their salaries.

Now, throw an additional strain on the financial markets. Block us from exploiting our own domestic sources of energy for a few decades. Watch as world demand for energy increases while doing nothing to increase our own production. Watch oil and gasoline prices rise because of our inaction. Watch food prices rise because of transportation prices rising.

Punish (or threaten to) the industrious. Profit is evil and too much profit is diabolical. It's greed. This despite the fact that as a percentage of gross revenue, oil company profits are solidly in line with those of other businesses and paltry in comparison to the technology businesses like software and the like.

Watch as home prices fall. Watch as people that never intended to own houses for the long term (flippers) find that those adjustable rate mortgages have their rates jump at the same time, so that rather than making a killing by flipping houses they take a loss. Watch them walk away from their own bad debt, defaulting. Now that “asset” bought up by the quasi-governmental bodies posing as banks is a real liability.

Watch the small lenders fail because of the defaulted loans and the government regulation that practically required them to increase their lending to the poor, and encouraged them to create “no down payment” and “sub prime” interest rate loans. Encourage people to overspend by offering practically free money and they'll do it, never mind the consequences in the future.

Couple it all with a bit of naked greed. Greed among the poor, trying to get something for nothing. Greed among the speculators, flipping houses with “disposable” mortgages. Greed among the executives, looking to “cook the books” for a bit of extra personal profit. And finally, greed among the congressmen, taking massive amounts of donations (on both sides of the aisle, but primarily Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, and several other top players in the Democratic party) from these organizations.

Forget about the administration's efforts to reform the regulatory scheme over the last five years. Efforts that were consistently blocked by those taking donations from the very companies that were to be re-regulated. Oh no... it's easier to blame the administration than to accept the blame for your own obstructionism.

And now, we're facing a trillion dollars of bailouts, in a single summer. Three hundred fifty billion dollars to help the “victims” of so-called predatory lenders earlier this year. After all, we can't have people paying for the consequences of their financial mistakes now can we, especially “the poor”. And now, we're considering a seven hundred billion dollar bailout of the financial industry, to bail them out for the consequences of the wrong regulations and the greed of a few congressmen's cronies. After all, these businesses are “too big to fail”. That's over a trillion dollars.

It makes the entire budget for the Iraq war look small.

And taxpayers are going to be on the hook for it. And let's face it. A trillion dollars is the estimate now. Have you ever known a massive government spending program to come in under budget?

Congress is to blame for this mess, together with the massive liabilities in Medicare and Social Security. Those programs are going south too, and we're looking at over fifty trillion in liabilities there over the next couple of decades. The federal highway trust fund is nearly bankrupt — because of diversions to non-highway spending like local bike trails and monuments to congressmen.

It's Congress that's to blame. Meanwhile, we focus our attention on the pain of the crisis, and focus our blame on the President. We focus our attention on the election of the President — worrying about lipstick and melanin, and vacuous promises.

We really should be focusing on our Congressmen. Throw the bums out!