Posted by
Tzimisce on Friday, September 26, 2008 12:04:08 PM
Okay I’ll admit it: I don’t know all that much about the banking meltdown, the lack of money on Wall Street or the how Freddie Mac/Fannie May work. But I do know left wing political speak when I hear it. I think most Americans would also recognize empty, feel good, liberal buzz phrases when presented with them. And in this bailout that’s all we seem to be hearing.
Firstly though from where I’m sitting all these companies going down the bankruptcy crapper are earmarking millions from their budgets to give the guys who took them into the ground million dollar bonuses. Individual employees losing their jobs should be mad. I think anyone would. Anyone who wasn’t getting a seven figure check anyway.
But from what I’ve heard, Freddie and Fannie did the exact same thing right before they went under too. The heads of these corrupt outfits made sure their “golden parachutes” were lined with millions in cash before their companies crashed. Well that and they gave their liberal Democrat friends (like Barack Obama) thousands in campaign contributions.
This is why my hackles are getting up as I read about Pelosi’s call for more “oversight” in the bailout plan. “Oversight” in lib speak means “we call the shots”. And Congressional “oversight” didn’t help Freddie or Fannie. In fact, there is evidence that the Congressional leaders in charge of “oversight” (people like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank) actively knew it was sinking into the ground but decided to let it collapse anyway.
So now they want me to believe their indignation is sincere? Truth be told, all of these people should be voted out of office. In practice, they’ll all be re-elected in landslides.
The point here is that Congress has a crummy track record. Their “oversight” amounts to nothing more than the creation of new cash cows to fund their re-election campaigns. That’s what they did with Freddie and Fannie and that’s what they seem to be planning for in their “bailout” plan.
Look the market is basically a form of gambling. You buy something on the chance that the price will go up and you can sell it. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the nature of the game. No one has a problem when their gambles pay off and they make millions if not billions.
But like the problem gambler now that they’ve been shown to be wrong, they’re whining and crying? It’s the nature of the game. I don’t feel sorry for you. You knew the rules when you came in. Casinos would never give the money back to the losers or the casinos would be out of business.
But that what it seems like we’re doing here. Only we’re not going to give them the five dollars they lost, we want to give them the jackpot they were sure they’d win on this pull of the slot. How offensive is that? Especially when these gamblers started out living in the penthouses while they attended the high stakes tables?
Are we to try to ignore the market forces we don’t like? That’s what we call “socialism”. The fact that left wing blog sites are all excited about this plan only reinforces my belief. This “bailout” plan (from where I’m sitting) does look like a conversion to socialism – a system where the government owns more private property than it should. And it should make everyone nervous – especially with the Freddie/Fannie angle.
I’ve heard it postulated that the bailout could possibly make the government a lot of money when they sell all of it back to the private sector. But it’s not the job of our government to turn a profit. If it was, why are they hammering us with inflated taxes? That aside, the last thing our government needs is more money. Look at how they treat what they’re getting now. Our waste is more than some nations GNP’s. And now we’re going to add a bunch of money on top of that? And these companies on the eve of being bought out are going to use the bailout money to reward the boneheads at the top that brought them to this end? Am I following this right?
The thought of bailing out a bunch of millionaires who knew the risks when they went in makes me want to vomit. Especially when you consider that they knew the possible payoffs. It’s not our faults that their gambles didn’t pay off. Why is it the responsibility of “the people” to now make it right? I don’t think so.