Where's the Crisis?

Although I still have a lot of faith in President Bush to do what's right for this country, I wonder if he is being given good financial advice. It appears something has to be done to help stabilize our financial system, but does it have to be this drastic? I know some so-called experts say people and businesses will soon fail to get loans to buy cars and homes, but so far things seem to continue like in the past. I keep getting solicitations for expanded credit and auto dealers seem to be selling cars. Even homes are being bought and sold. Things seem to be going on normally from my limited vantage point, so I have to assume that the financial experts see something I'm not seeing. This crisis has the investment market in a free fall, but is it because we know there is a serious problem, or because we only think there is a real problem. Do we really know for sure? I'll leave it at that for now.

Optimism is Always an Option

Our government's bailout mentality that I wrote about some time ago, has now officially morphed into socialism. The so-called imminent collapse of our financial system resulted primarily from government interference with the free market of our monetary credit system via government controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other institutions - i.e. handing out bad loans and mixing them up with our investments. What do we get out of the mess that government helped create? You're right - we get more government control.

I'm afraid with the advent of the proposed "bailout" or "rescue" plan, along with the likely continuance and possibly strengthening of the liberal block of our congressional senators and representatives, the next few years will lead to an exponential increase in government control of our everyday lives including health care, education, the environment, energy, and now much more control of our financial system which is the engine of our economy. If you control the engine, you control the ship.

Moreover, if the Democratic nominee, whose past education and associations are linked to anti-capitalism and socialistic policies, gains control of the White House, combined with a liberal majority in Congress, our free market system and our way of life will be drastically changed in the years to come. The damage will take many years to reverse assuming we will gain the will to reverse it in the first place.

Those of us who have benefited from the greatness of this country over the past 50-60 years will not much be effected except maybe for a somewhat decreased standard of living in retirement, but the emerging generations will be greatly effected by an increased dependency on government. This greatness was built on hard work, personal accountability, self-sufficiency, and our capitalistic system over the past 230 plus years. We now approach a serious turning point and I'm not sure we have the collective will to reverse course and decrease government control, but optimism is always an option.