Getting It Right - Bailing Out a Sinking Ship 2/26/09

Let us pray our floundering does not lead to foundering

This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"Are our leaders grasping at straws as they attempt to keep us all from sinking?"
Impending disaster after impending disaster, grab a bucket of money and start another bail out…that seems to be occurring every few days as our government leaders desperately deal with continuing defaults among the industrial icons of our economy. Each day unfolds a new agenda full of depressing news of massive quarterly losses, certain bankruptcies, growing unemployment, massive layoffs, falling sales, struggling bureaucracies, and a sinking stock market. Citizens go about their daily routines, but there seems to be an air of impending doom created by all of the negatives which are bombarding us. "Is the sky really falling?" Chicken Little says so. (Along with ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, and every newspaper and magazine you pick up.) Even President Obama seems to be saying it is happening.
Our government is preparing to hurl massive amounts of future tax dollars at these problems in what might be considered a desperate, knee-jerk reaction. I pray some of the bailed monies reach the heart of the fires and create some improvement. However, there are several aspects of what is happening (and appears to be happening at a frantic rate) which I have deep concerns about.
First, I do not fully support the concept of giving bail out funding to selected failing companies while others are left to die. Who decides who lives and who dies…and what are the criteria for these choices?
Personally, I seriously doubt the justification for bailing out the U.S. Automotive manufacturing companies who need billions of our dollars in order to continue operations. Their history of over-unionization of their industry, poor management, and allowing capitulations to greedy union demands over the years which eventually created overhead burdens which caused their products to be non-competitively priced, creates an indictment for the entire bunch in my mind. I feel the owners, executives, workers, and retired workers are all guilty of excessive greed, disregard for the consumer, and poor choices. I feel they deserve to fail and should not be allowed to continue at our expense.
Secondly, I feel a similar disregard for the Wall Street Brokerage houses which lost billions by greedily chasing dollars off of the investment cliff. They should have been allowed to plunge to their death as the stock market plunged and looted the life savings of millions of common citizens. It is true our government regulators were not doing their job, and many were on the "take" from the brokerages through their lobbying activities. I say "Death to the greedy horde!"
Thirdly, however, when it comes to the banking industry I do feel some compassion. I can’t believe I am saying this as I write, since I have often stated that the banking "money changers" were all a bunch of greedy scoundrels….but that is no reason to put them to death. In this instance they were forced to make bad loans to bad people by bad government policies. They had no choice in the matter, and thus should be bailed out and spared.
During the 1990’s and until the collapse, our liberal politicians literally forced the banks to make bad loans for housing the poor. I suppose they felt Habitat for Humanity was building houses at too slow of a pace, so they made a welfare housing system out of the entire home mortgage industry. If banks did not demonstrate a mortgage portfolio which included the prescribed number of minority or disadvantaged loans, they were severely penalized by the liberal minded regulators. They had to do it.
These banking "entitlements" eventually amounted to billions and billions of real estate loans, and created a major portion of the "bubble" which eventually burst and started the downslide of our economy. It is true that a goodly amount of speculation and greed also occurred. These were encouraged by the liberalized, unregulated banking policies which were encouraged by our federal government.
So, how do we change this leaking row boat economy back into the raging bass boat it once was?
In order to restore economic growth and real stimulus I feel we must focus our resources and attention on restoring our industrial foundations. The existing approaches are only creating temporary, project created jobs and are creating growth of government jobs which constitutes an increased economic overhead burden.
I feel the Small Business Administration should be reinvigorated to create financing for new, small business initiatives…with all of the minority set-aside bull crap removed. It should offer very low cost financing and loan guarantees to banks which approve local business start-ups or expansions.
I feel cost equalization programs should be initiated to assist U.S. industries in exporting U.S. made products to other parts of the world. These programs would be shipping cost credits, wage differential credits, and duty-tariff credits when our companies are charged these fees by foreign governments.
When other countries wish to send their products to the U.S. markets they should only enjoy free trade if they are simultaneously allowing U.S. products into their country on a similar free trade basis. They should also be in compliance with child labor and forced labor restrictions, and reasonable environmental regulations. If they are not in compliance with these requirements, we should impose import duties and tariffs on their products.
In my opinion, in our politicians haste to embrace the concept of a "global marketplace" and "free trade", we made a lot of "bad deals". We traded away the farm and got little or nothing in return as we watched millions of our jobs be lost as our factories closed and new factories opened across Asia. We are paying for those mistakes today as we struggle with a teetering economy which has little foundation remaining.
We should improve our ports, our cross country rail systems to assist movement of products and people, our educational system needs overhaul and redirection as an investment in our future. And most importantly, we should deny all attempts to move our national economic processes toward socialism and communism…..they do not work! If we begin to focus in these directions instead of foolish, porkish projects……We Will Be "Getting It Right"
Rudiments – Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning:
● My "In Defense of Dozier" series of stories really upset those guys who are trying to glean a few million dollars in reparations from our easy touch politicians by claiming hideous and heinous treatment by administrators at Dozier fifty years ago. They have been bombarding our web site with blogs calling me a "jackass", and blasting my abilities and reasoning. They become very aggressive when their potential jackpot is threatened. Some of their railing was too vulgar and over the line to allow on the web site.
● I do feel isolated events of abuse might have occurred. However, if this type of treatment had been commonplace it soon would have become common knowledge. Because there were constant investigations being initiated by Tallahassee overseers, because parents regularly were on the then open campus and having unsupervised conversations with their children, because the professional, trustworthy medical staff never reported any signs of abuse, and because these derelict clowns waited fifty years before becoming inspired to submit these claims….I doubt their validity.
● Hillary Clinton is currently in China begging them to continue to support our troubled economy by buying the debt we are issuing to "stimulate" ourselves. I wonder what we do if they say "No"? Where does one go when you need a quick loan of a few trillion dollars?
● The cops are getting hungrier and hungrier. Our man who delivers the Jackson County Times throughout the county was stopped three times last Wednesday night. He has not had a ticket in fifteen years, but was stopped twice in Georgia and once on highway 231. The bureaucracy is getting desperate for funding.
● We are proud of our new "Partners With Education" page. Be sure and read it while you have this issue in hand. We will be doing this until the end of the school term.
Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Hatcher Publications.