Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America

If you have a copy of the United States Constitution lying around, you can go ahead and run it through the paper shredder or burn it. At this point the paper it was wrote on is worth more than the words. The United States Congress has been ignoring it for several of years with no accountability from the American voter. In doing so we have taken this nation into areas we never had any business being in.

In fact we created the greatest financial risk and collapse this country has ever seen by ignoring the principles and wisdoms placed by the founders of the constitution. Politicians in Congress think they are above the constitution. They thought they knew better. They thought they could do better and create a system outside the boundaries of the law. They were wrong! We were wrong for letting them continue to do it without accountability.

For years Congress continued to spend more, create a bigger and more intrusive government, limiting freedom while increasing their power for the social experiment to supply all with an increased standard of living.

The government required banks to offer no money down mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for before unqualified low-income family borrowers with good or bad credit became the norm. After all, everyone in America should own a house regardless if they can actually afford it. This significantly increased the demand for houses inflating the housing market and creating the housing bubble.

As the bubble grew, so did the amount of dangerous subprime loans given. While the economy was on the rise everyone was happy. Then gas prices started to rise. Interest rates rose and paychecks got squeezed. All of a sudden our unqualified borrowers couldn’t make their mortgage payments. Foreclosures skyrocketed, banks quit lending them money and no one was buying houses only selling. The bubble popped as house prices plummeted. All those government-backed mortgages became worthless and banks begin to collapse.

Did Congress and politicians learn their lesson? No, instead they blame it on the free market. It is capitalisms fault, not ours. The premise from most of our politicians on both sides of the aisle of this financial crisis is that some how the free market has failed and the government must come to the rescue. The truth is the crisis we are now in is a result of government intervention in the market.

This is not a failure of the free market. In a free market, bankers would not give loans to people who are not qualified.

We started to here politicians say things like the government must act to protect the financial well being of all from the reckless financial actions of a few.

Someone show me where in the constitution does it say it is the government’s responsibility to protect the financial well being of anybody? I must have missed it in my copy!

I am so disgusted by this bailout! Democrats and Republicans both united to vote for this damn bill. Both presidential candidates voted for it. We can’t get them to unite to win wars, or close our borders, but we can get them to unite to give them the absolute most power they will ever gain over the free market ever!!! Does anyone realize how much control this bill gives the federal government? How much real estate the government will now own?

There is no way you can justify in the constitution the government should be a source of mortgages for homeowners, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to control more than 50% of the mortgages in this country before this bailout.

We are in tough times, but they are going to get tougher until the American people hold Congress and politicians accountable to live within the rules of the US Constitution that have served this country so well. We are ignoring the constitution at our own peril and are reaping exactly what we have sown.

Capitalism is pretty much dead. Welcome to the United Socialist States of America! The US Constitution was bought and destroyed for 700 billion dollars!!!

Perhaps it is time to reject the two-party system in this country. It’s time for a revolution! A voter revolution…The Libertarian Party anyone?

Saturday, October 04, 2008

The bailout is full of pork!

The Senate and the House have passed the bailout bill, and President Bush has signed it into law. It wasn’t just a bailout though. This 400 plus page bill is loaded with pork, some additional spending here, a tax break there, and government regulations. A lot of these add-ons have nothing to do with the bailout at all. The Tax Foundation has compiled a list from the pork-infested bill.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Health insurance companies are now going to be required to include mental health care on parity with care of physical illness. This will increase premiums on every health care plan in America. You get no choice if you want such coverage; they are required to include it in any plan.

Look for more people to drop coverage, and more politicians scream for the dire need of universal healthcare. Of course that is the goal, to make private health insurance unaffordable. Why would they do that? Control. The government gains even more control of you by controlling your access to health care.

Also in this bailout is a tax break for some company that makes a particular type of wooden arrow used by some children somewhere.

A seven-year cost recovery period for motor sports racing track facility… No…I am not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up.

If this is the crisis our politicians keep making it out to be, then why are politicians putting racetrack pork, tax breaks for children’s arrows and mental parity spending into this bill?

Here is a full copy of the bill for your reading enjoyment.

Senator calls for Justice Dept. to investigate institutions in financial crisis.

Senator Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, has sent a letter to Attorney General Mike Mukasey calling for a criminal investigation into the failed economic crisis.

“…Given the gravity of the situation, the American people need to know if any of the blame lies with the wrongdoing of any individuals or institutions,” writes Conrad. “It is my understanding that the FBI has undertaken investigations into certain activities of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I call upon the Justice Department to expand its scrutiny of the financial and housing industries in order to expose possible wrongdoing at other institutions that may have contributed to the present state of our markets and economy. Any violations of law must be prosecuted and those responsible must be held accountable.”


Absolutely Senator. How about we start in the Halls of the Congress? That is where my investigation would start, and the first person I would interrogate is Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the Financial Services Committee chairman.
Ten things that will result from the financial crisis…they are not really changes, just going back to the way things should have and use to be done.