News
ENLARGE
“The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America.”
—Senator Jim Bunning, (R) Kentucky
Capitalism appears to be another failed system in a long line of failed systems. A system founded on the basest of human weakness was bound to fail without a system to regulate it.
For the last eight years, a government that didn’t believe government was worth a damn has been in charge. It just stepped back and let the markets run amok.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. The Democrats are just as deep in the back pockets of the investment banks and Wall Street as the Republicans. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Clinton and Bush on this issue. Alan Greenspan has spent the last decade feeding us all cheap money so we can keep the party going. And most importantly, the American public has been stuck in the era of instant gratification for years. Now we’ll be stuck in soup lines.
Now we are going to bail out the banks. So much for government being the problem... now it’s the solution. What we all have to watch is that the entire country doesn’t get ripped off by the very people whose uncontrolled gambling got us into this situation. Section 8 of the proposal put forth by Henry Paulson reads: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
Are they crazy? The Bush administration has lost or given away billions in Iraq with no oversight whatsoever. It figured out that the national treasury was where the money is and it has opened to as many of it cronies as it possibly can under the guise of privatizing war. It tried to give Wall Street the nation’s Social Security to fleece. Now it wants a $700 billion blank check to be fed to the sharks that caused this mess. There are many in Congress fighting to provide oversight, but these same lawmakers have been known to cave to pressure before. All Bush has to do is accuse them of being unpatriotic, or “do-nothing,” and they will act in haste even if it’s the wrong plan.
If this socialization of Wall Street’s losses comes to fruition (notice that they never socialize the profit) it will be up to the government to sell all of these bad mortgages. That’s some five million homes being dropped on a housing market already in decline. What will be the result of such a move be for a homeowner just holding on to the value of his home? Soon everyone will be upside down on their loans and this time it will be the government that is directly responsible.
This $700 billion bailout of these gambling sharks is a panic attack that offers no guarantee of success. We’ve already thrown hundreds of billions at this problem to no avail. A responsible government would sit down and hammer this out over a period of time that would give it ample thought and debate. Writing such a bill and passing it by the end of this week will assure, in my opinion, that the taxpayers will lose their $700 billion and we’ll still spiral into recession or worse. Moreover, if it is adopted as written, we’ll never know where any of it went.
Capitalism doesn’t have to die, but socialism shouldn’t be considered to be such a bad word. If we’re willing to spend a trillion dollars on a bunch of wealthy bankers that have reaped so much profit at the expense of their country, we should be able to come up with the money to give every person in the country health care. Chances are that the same people that caused this mess will use it as an excuse not to take care of the health care crisis. No telling what the health care crisis will cost us if it is not addressed.
Other problems loom on the horizon as America’s credit card society comes home to roost. All of the commercial banks have set themselves up for failure as well. There is no way taxpayers can bail them all out. We can spend $700 billion today and tomorrow they’ll be back for another trillion. None of it looks good.
The idea that business will regulate itself is another lesson that should be learned. Left to their own devices, pure capitalists will eat their own young. They will destroy themselves and the United States of America with their own greed without a second thought as long as short-term goals are met. Corporations that pollute cannot be expected to regulate their own pollution. Oil companies can’t regulate where we allow them to drill. Capitalism without regulation has failed.
The party is over.
Author’s note: Since I began this column the stock market fell, oil rose and our leaders appear to be thinking the same way as I am. Hopefully, they will do the right thing and let capitalism settle this once and for all. Write your congressman now! Then get ready, it’s going to be painful.
Johnny Boyd doesn’t understand all of this any better than the CEO of Lehman Brothers, but Johnny isn’t bankrupt. Get a copy of Johnny’s book, First Tracks, at Sundance Gifts, The Aspen Bookstore and online at www.ptopress.com. E-mail: snomasokistATmsn.com
—Senator Jim Bunning, (R) Kentucky
Capitalism appears to be another failed system in a long line of failed systems. A system founded on the basest of human weakness was bound to fail without a system to regulate it.
For the last eight years, a government that didn’t believe government was worth a damn has been in charge. It just stepped back and let the markets run amok.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. The Democrats are just as deep in the back pockets of the investment banks and Wall Street as the Republicans. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Clinton and Bush on this issue. Alan Greenspan has spent the last decade feeding us all cheap money so we can keep the party going. And most importantly, the American public has been stuck in the era of instant gratification for years. Now we’ll be stuck in soup lines.
Now we are going to bail out the banks. So much for government being the problem... now it’s the solution. What we all have to watch is that the entire country doesn’t get ripped off by the very people whose uncontrolled gambling got us into this situation. Section 8 of the proposal put forth by Henry Paulson reads: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
Are they crazy? The Bush administration has lost or given away billions in Iraq with no oversight whatsoever. It figured out that the national treasury was where the money is and it has opened to as many of it cronies as it possibly can under the guise of privatizing war. It tried to give Wall Street the nation’s Social Security to fleece. Now it wants a $700 billion blank check to be fed to the sharks that caused this mess. There are many in Congress fighting to provide oversight, but these same lawmakers have been known to cave to pressure before. All Bush has to do is accuse them of being unpatriotic, or “do-nothing,” and they will act in haste even if it’s the wrong plan.
If this socialization of Wall Street’s losses comes to fruition (notice that they never socialize the profit) it will be up to the government to sell all of these bad mortgages. That’s some five million homes being dropped on a housing market already in decline. What will be the result of such a move be for a homeowner just holding on to the value of his home? Soon everyone will be upside down on their loans and this time it will be the government that is directly responsible.
This $700 billion bailout of these gambling sharks is a panic attack that offers no guarantee of success. We’ve already thrown hundreds of billions at this problem to no avail. A responsible government would sit down and hammer this out over a period of time that would give it ample thought and debate. Writing such a bill and passing it by the end of this week will assure, in my opinion, that the taxpayers will lose their $700 billion and we’ll still spiral into recession or worse. Moreover, if it is adopted as written, we’ll never know where any of it went.
Capitalism doesn’t have to die, but socialism shouldn’t be considered to be such a bad word. If we’re willing to spend a trillion dollars on a bunch of wealthy bankers that have reaped so much profit at the expense of their country, we should be able to come up with the money to give every person in the country health care. Chances are that the same people that caused this mess will use it as an excuse not to take care of the health care crisis. No telling what the health care crisis will cost us if it is not addressed.
Other problems loom on the horizon as America’s credit card society comes home to roost. All of the commercial banks have set themselves up for failure as well. There is no way taxpayers can bail them all out. We can spend $700 billion today and tomorrow they’ll be back for another trillion. None of it looks good.
The idea that business will regulate itself is another lesson that should be learned. Left to their own devices, pure capitalists will eat their own young. They will destroy themselves and the United States of America with their own greed without a second thought as long as short-term goals are met. Corporations that pollute cannot be expected to regulate their own pollution. Oil companies can’t regulate where we allow them to drill. Capitalism without regulation has failed.
The party is over.
Author’s note: Since I began this column the stock market fell, oil rose and our leaders appear to be thinking the same way as I am. Hopefully, they will do the right thing and let capitalism settle this once and for all. Write your congressman now! Then get ready, it’s going to be painful.
Johnny Boyd doesn’t understand all of this any better than the CEO of Lehman Brothers, but Johnny isn’t bankrupt. Get a copy of Johnny’s book, First Tracks, at Sundance Gifts, The Aspen Bookstore and online at www.ptopress.com. E-mail: snomasokistATmsn.com
