My outrage at the pricetag of this bailout is compounded by my disbelief at the lack of accountability demanded from those REALLY responsible and the real implications of this piece of legislative garbage. There are 4 groups of people to blame for this mess. I will list them in order of responsibility.
1.) The National Government- Let us not fool ourselves; two GSEs (government sponsored enterprises) are the primary culprits in this fiasco. In the name of social justice, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sold subprime mortgages to low-income or 'under-represented' citizens who could offer no proof of income, no proof of employment, and no credible assets to act as collateral. These mortgages were than repackaged into MBSs (mortgage backed securities) and offered as investment tools for the market. Thanks to deceptive accounting principles that were necessary due to massive profit loss and outright theft by government appointed supervisors, these MBSs were advertised by Democrats as financially sound and good investment options. It was a ponzi scheme writ large which poisoned the well that many private financial institutions drank from. Our Congress has committed CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE in allowing this house of cards to exist in a free market. Our Presidents, since FDR (and especially Carter, Clinton and now Bush) have been willing accomplices, all the while 12 unelected Justices decreed social engineering to be the goal of society and the economy. We now live in a country bankrupted (morally and almost financially) by the fraudulent dogma of socialism.
2.) Community Action Groups (CAGs)- I have nothing against grass root organizations promoting the American Dream. What I oppose are groups who believe (mistakingly) that the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of our government must be coerced into producing equality of results on issues of housing. Our Constitution was written to operate in an environment of equal opportunity and equality before the eyes of the law. We now have groups that believe the American Dream to be government guaranteed entitlements of egalitarianism. What I oppose are groups campaigning as community action entities, but are nothing more than thinly veiled government PACs demanding our money to buy votes for one particular political party. What I oppose are leaders of these organizations (i.e. Barack Obama) who use these groups as a tool of black mail against a free enterprise. These type of organizations are not campaigning for the improvement of a community, but are liberal anarchists with a socialist agenda that, in their mind, will bring them power.
3.) Certain American Citizens- I find blaming this group the hardest to do, but full accountability is necessary. We have in this country, people brought up to believe that privileges are rights, freedom is nothing more than government guaranteed entitlements, and success is the possession of items that maybe outside their economic reality. Thanks to the government and the CAGs, many Americans have been emboldened to demand concessions from all of us that are not financially viable. Living outside one's means due to the mistaken belief that they are owed it or that the government will help them out has contributed significantly to this crisis.
4.) Wall Street- Many may find that I place little blame on Wall Street. Before they dismiss my argument out of hand, I ask that they read my assertion. GSEs were, for all intents and purposes, backed up by the national government. As I alluded to before, these subprime mortgages were repackaged into MBSs and glossed over with deceptive accounting practices intitiated by equally deceptive CEOs of Fannie (Franklin Raines) and Freddie. Congressional overseers continually lauded the GSEs as safe and sound as well as great investment tools. To the private market, these investment looked solvent and profitable and, besides, they were backed up by the national government (i.e. the taxpayers). While Wall Street firms should have dug a little deeper to uncover the poisonous nature of these MBSs, their blame resides in the fact that they ASSUMED the government had not lied to them. This should be a lesson to all of us.
What we now have is a 'rescue package' designed and passed by many of those who concocted this mess. Advertised as a bailout of Wall Street and Main Street, these accusations miss the real aim of this act of treachery: it damns capitalism and allows socialism to fill the void. Every American should start to seriously consider how representative their government really is and how free we really are!
Saturday, October 4, 2008
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This Is My Soapbox.....So Shut Up and Listen!
Chaos Out of Order
Chaos. No rational person desires to exist in such a state, nor can one tolerate any sign of societal decline leading to this stage of hopelessness. This is one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected; people perceived the free market operating chaotically due to a supposed lack of federal regulations and oversight. Houses were being foreclosed, the markets were tanking, pensions were being wiped out, investments and credit were drying up and vital industries were suddenly on the verge of insolvency. Chaos, it appeared, loomed on the horizon.Obama campaigned on ‘hope and change’. While an emotive and reformatory slogan, it lacked specifics. This should have signaled to any potential supporter, an ideology absent fundamental guiding principles. The demagoguery of a populist and its’ effects on a populace with a grand sense of entitlement is a topic for another time, what I wish to do is examine one aspect of Friedrich Hayek’s observations of collectivism (i.e. Leftism, socialism) as it relates to combating perceived politico-economic chaos.The attempt to restore order or avert a descent into chaos requires planning and implementation. Conservatives have long espoused the theory that individuals, unfettered by the restraints of unnecessary governmental intrusion, will make the best decisions for themselves and their family, which in turn will benefit society as a whole. Leftists have adhered to the misconception that the growing complexity of society REQUIRES increased central planning, on behalf of the government, in order to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. For hundreds of years, Leftist intellectuals have dismissed the individualist approach (i.e. conservative) as leaving too much to chance and being susceptible to greed. Central planning, these intellectuals insisted, allowed the State the power to ensure that the resources of the nation were being allocated to the common good. This line of thinking became crystallized thanks to Karl Marx’s collectivist cry of “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.The housing market meltdown of last year that precipitated the financial chaos which has now gripped the world, was used as the latest example of ‘excessive capitalist greed’ undermining the social good. Obama was ushered into office to bring order to this anarchy, but how many people truly realize that Leftist ideologies address chaos with more chaos until tyranny results? And why is this? Consider the words of Hayek: “The planning authority cannot confine itself to providing opportunities for unknown people to make whatever use of them they like. It cannot tie itself down in advance to general and formal rules which prevent arbitrariness. It must provide for the actual needs of the people as they arise and then choose deliberately between them.” The key word in this quote was arbitrariness. Under the guise of regulating and providing oversight, which makes the average American feel like ‘something is being done’, the government is in effect opening up a Pandora’s box of arbitrarily-applied, constituent-based, policies, which will increase the uncertainty many citizens will eventually have with the direction of their economy and the application of their laws. Americans should have first been alerted to this when Obama moved to avoid contractual law during the uproar over executive bonuses, but the myth created about evil CEOs had at this point become too pervasive. The die was cast.This growing uncertainty begins us down the ‘road to serfdom’. As Hayek observed: “Yet agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their responsibility……The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning.”Our nation has elected a President to address a financial disaster that arbitrary governmental policies created (affordable housing GSEs). This President, a disciple of socialism, has embarked on a plan that has injected more chaos into the system, leaving many future Americans susceptible to the appeal of an economic and political tyranny. If we do not change course, the worst is yet in store.
Chaos. No rational person desires to exist in such a state, nor can one tolerate any sign of societal decline leading to this stage of hopelessness. This is one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected; people perceived the free market operating chaotically due to a supposed lack of federal regulations and oversight. Houses were being foreclosed, the markets were tanking, pensions were being wiped out, investments and credit were drying up and vital industries were suddenly on the verge of insolvency. Chaos, it appeared, loomed on the horizon.Obama campaigned on ‘hope and change’. While an emotive and reformatory slogan, it lacked specifics. This should have signaled to any potential supporter, an ideology absent fundamental guiding principles. The demagoguery of a populist and its’ effects on a populace with a grand sense of entitlement is a topic for another time, what I wish to do is examine one aspect of Friedrich Hayek’s observations of collectivism (i.e. Leftism, socialism) as it relates to combating perceived politico-economic chaos.The attempt to restore order or avert a descent into chaos requires planning and implementation. Conservatives have long espoused the theory that individuals, unfettered by the restraints of unnecessary governmental intrusion, will make the best decisions for themselves and their family, which in turn will benefit society as a whole. Leftists have adhered to the misconception that the growing complexity of society REQUIRES increased central planning, on behalf of the government, in order to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. For hundreds of years, Leftist intellectuals have dismissed the individualist approach (i.e. conservative) as leaving too much to chance and being susceptible to greed. Central planning, these intellectuals insisted, allowed the State the power to ensure that the resources of the nation were being allocated to the common good. This line of thinking became crystallized thanks to Karl Marx’s collectivist cry of “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.The housing market meltdown of last year that precipitated the financial chaos which has now gripped the world, was used as the latest example of ‘excessive capitalist greed’ undermining the social good. Obama was ushered into office to bring order to this anarchy, but how many people truly realize that Leftist ideologies address chaos with more chaos until tyranny results? And why is this? Consider the words of Hayek: “The planning authority cannot confine itself to providing opportunities for unknown people to make whatever use of them they like. It cannot tie itself down in advance to general and formal rules which prevent arbitrariness. It must provide for the actual needs of the people as they arise and then choose deliberately between them.” The key word in this quote was arbitrariness. Under the guise of regulating and providing oversight, which makes the average American feel like ‘something is being done’, the government is in effect opening up a Pandora’s box of arbitrarily-applied, constituent-based, policies, which will increase the uncertainty many citizens will eventually have with the direction of their economy and the application of their laws. Americans should have first been alerted to this when Obama moved to avoid contractual law during the uproar over executive bonuses, but the myth created about evil CEOs had at this point become too pervasive. The die was cast.This growing uncertainty begins us down the ‘road to serfdom’. As Hayek observed: “Yet agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their responsibility……The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning.”Our nation has elected a President to address a financial disaster that arbitrary governmental policies created (affordable housing GSEs). This President, a disciple of socialism, has embarked on a plan that has injected more chaos into the system, leaving many future Americans susceptible to the appeal of an economic and political tyranny. If we do not change course, the worst is yet in store.
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