The United States Government Will Not Solve This Crisis

I have been thinking about this financial mess America is in, especially with the presidential election coming on. And here are some thoughts. Forgive me for rambling, but there is a lot to ponder.

I have been a Republican for many years, but it is really hard to vote Republican this year. And by that, I don’t mean I would vote for Obama. What I mean is, all I hear on the media—internet included—is: whose fault is this credit crisis? And the answer is: the blame falls on a lot of people. And one of the biggest culprits is the federal government itself—just the government, not the Democrats or Republicans, but a stupid government that thinks it can do everything for everyone—especially helping the poor buy houses that they can’t afford. And not one candidate, Democrat or Republican, is acknowledging that fact.

Instead, they just keep telling us that they will fix it. Right. They were too stupid to even understand the problem they were creating over a period of years, and too stupid to recognize how their feeble-minded egalitarian policies were digging this hole . . . and they really think that a plan slapped together in two weeks and $700 billion will bandaid this thing? Let’s be clear. Congress is made up of 435 representatives and 100 Senators, most of whom were trained as lawyers, and most of whom have been banging around the Capitol Building for so long they can’t even answer a simple question without blathering on in politic-speak for ten minutes before they realize that all you asked them was where the nearest restroom is.

I mean, did you listen to the answers in the debates? Enough with the bipartisan nonsense and the who voted for what. Who cares? Sarah Palin was a relief, just because it was nice to hear someone state a simple declarative sentence that actually means something. The media were inordinately impressed with Joe Biden just because he could smoothly spout his voting record—even though it turned out that he was lying through his teeth about that. But if you were such a brilliant leader in the Senate for 35 years, Joe, why is the country in such a bloody mess? Where is even the slightest hint of humility or shouldering of responsibility for what our wonderful government has done to this country–not to mention the rest of the world?  We don’t need foreign terrorists to destroy our country; our own home-grown do-gooder legislators and investment bankers have done an absolutely bang-up job. 

And now they are going to “fix” it.  Honestly, do you really think that 535 lawyers understand this monster on their hands well enough to really get us out of this jam? And here’s another funny thing: don’t the do-gooders who want national healthcare see what is in front of their own faces? Gee, the government did such a wonderful job meddling with our markets, why don’t we let them take over healthcare? Just what we want: hospitals run by the same types of bureaucrats who operate the DMV. Nationalized healthcare for everyone means you get to compete for a kidney transplant with some street bum whose been drinking Thunderbird for 20 years.

And finally, a lot of the blame falls on all of us. Because we let the government play us and we were–and continue to be, apparently–stupid enough to trust them with safeguarding our welfare.

And face it. It isn’t just Wall Street that was greedy—a lot of us were, too. How many of us put our heads down and paid down our debts and lived within our means? We sit here and talk about how the national debt is going to fall on the backs of our grandchildren, but have we done a lot better? How many of us have saddled down our own households with debt that stretches out over the next few decades? How many of us put our own money—retirement and savings—in the hands of Wall Street, wanting to get in on the goodies?

The prices of our homes were going up, so we thought we couldn’t lose. People maxed out their equity, or even borrowed greater than their homes’ values, figuring everything was still on the positive side of the balance sheet so long as real estate went up. Banks and credit card companies went along happily, feeding our desire to have more than we could afford—extending us credit at usurious rates for everything we wanted: new cars, bigger televisions, fancier holidays, vacation homes, timeshares, boats. And even if you personally did not go whole hog, a lot of people did.

The evidence was there for us to see, too, but we didn’t want to work that hard. It was easier to go along. You know, it’s amazing, but the amount of faith we had in the system was based on very little—certainly, not based on our hard-earned knowledge and understanding of the financial and credit markets. Certainly, not based upon our in-depth understanding of the legislation that was shifting all of the lending and accounting rules for lending institutions, so that money was being given to people who hadn’t the faintest clue about (or interest in) the responsibility of home ownership.

If we lost a little, we want to blame someone else and get in on the gravy train. Well, take a bit of humble pie, instead, if you need to. And if you feed at the trough, welcome to the Union of Socialist States of America. Oh, and getting back to voting: I guess I’ll vote Republican, but only because I believe Obama is a liar and a socialist. But no matter whom we elect, if we trust the United States government to get us out of this mess, then we deserve whatever we get.

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