Nearly every major economist in the United States warned that the massive bailout plan for Wall Street was a big mistake.
Yet our elected representatives in Congress voted in favor of it.
Granted, most of our elected officials are not economists. But would that not carry the presumption that one would consult the experts in a field about which one knows very little?
Apparently not if you are in Congress...which is not quite fair to say since many in the House voted against the measure, but not enough to prevent the Pelosi-Bush pork-laden bill to pass.
Defying the wisdom of economists across the spectrum in a broad sampling of colleges and universities, and think-tanks, the Congress voted to grant a pass to the worst offenders in the economic entanglement on Wall Street and essentially reward bad behavior on the part of FannieMae and FreddieMac.
The markets reacted by sliding downward, not upward. That is not unexpected, folks.
This is the America we live in today. If you are a small business owner on Main Street, nobody comes around from Washington to forgive all of your bad decisions, investment mistakes, and bad debt. But if you are a big wig on Wall Street, commit fraud and exhibit the most bumbling, befuddled, boneheaded decision-making on the planet, you get rewarded for it by Congress in the form of more money.
We have the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Charles Rangel to thank for creating a culture in which this nightmarish scenario was likely to happen.
When the government begins using its own entities such as FannieMae and FreddieMac to pressure lending institutions to give loans to people who cannot even begin to pay back what they borrow, it is simply asking for a crash down the line.
This is why we are experiencing the present problem.
Democrats in Congress, along with Bill Clinton, treated the lending industry as a social program for the poor beginning in the 1990s. No matter that you laden the poor with a financial burden that they will never get out of short of bankruptcy. We can pat ourselves on the back because, 'We enabled the less fortunate to buy homes.'
That's great as long as they can afford to pay back the mortgage. But when you lend $300,000 to a family that can only afford $100,000, what does any smart person know will happen down the line?
But the bozos in Washington wanted to pretend that what would happen down the line is of no major consequence. What matters is getting the poor into those homes at any cost.
Thus, the advent of predatory lending that took advantage of people with no means to pay.
And now, instead of reigning in this insanity, the insane who run the asylum have decided to reward the insanity by creating more insanity.
This, my friends, is the way Congress works when we elect goons and incompetents to office.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
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4 comments:
One error:
"Thus, the advent of predatory lending that took advantage of people with no means to pay."
I must disagree here. The ones they took advantage of here were us — the responsible citizen who has good credit, works a job, pays their bills, etc.
After all, who is it that foots the bill when someone files for bankruptcy?
I can assure you, its not the bank. No, they pass that loss on to everyone else in the form of fees, higher interest rates, etc.
Who is it that pays the cost for the court's time when a bankruptcy is filed and processed?
We do in the form of higher taxes for the growing expenses of the court.
You can take it from here . . .
In effect, this whole thing is a scam to make virtual slaves out of honest, hard-working, responsible citizens — just like in the communist countries.
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I don't usually disagree publically, but I strongly felt it necessary to call you to look deeper.
You are welcome to disagree with me publicly here, Mr. Davis. I welcome discussion, debate, disagreement.
Your words are fitly spoken and very true. I did not intend to suggest that the average taxpayer was not victimized by government in this debacle.
In fact, one could make a case that ALL of us have been victimized by the politicians who pushed these programs. Even the businesses who provided the loans were victimized due to enormous pressure from government to do so.
But ultimately, you are correct that it is the taxpayer who is left to pick up the tab, and thus, we are the ones who have been ultimately victimized.
"When the government begins using its own entities such as FannieMae and FreddieMac to pressure lending institutions to give loans to people who cannot even begin to pay back what they borrow, it is simply asking for a crash down the line."
and thus you have exposed the reason they voted against good sense, though you may not have recognized it as the reason. When the consequences of the collapse would be felt by the public at large,there would be calls for criminal charges and prosecutions, as well as undesired election results in the future.
Their vote on the bailout wasn't about fixing the problem, it was about CYA.
Yep...and that is why the very ones who are most culpable in the mess, such as Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, and others, pushed so hard for the bailout...it was basically about saving their own...uh...carcasses.
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