Obama's Wrong About the Financial Crisis

Of course anybody who listens to news radio or follows any real news source's RSS feed has probably already heard Obama's warning to Wall Street. As I heard it on the radio and read through it on the BBC's site, a few things he said really concerned me. Now, obviously something has to change, but I believe the right change would be to get rid of or start to move away from the Fed. Since the New Deal turned out to be a raw deal, I think we should give capitalism another spin.

'He called on Wall Street to support "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression".' This is scary to those of us who believe that the New Deal prolonged rather than alleviated the Great Depression.

"Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them. They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation's." First of all, I do think it is a bad idea to talk about "they" without naming names. It sucks credibility out of your statements. Secondly, I think it's dangerous to say that bankers are putting our nation in peril. This sounds like a prelude to martial law. It also sounds awfully socialist to blame rich people for ruining our nation. The Nazis did it, the Communists did it, and now Obama's doing it. This is especially interesting to me since it's coming on the heels of Brazil's president, whose country is about to borrow billions of dollars from the US to fund offshore drilling development (link), blaming everything on the rich (link).

'He told Wall Street that it could not resume taking risks without regard for consequences and said they should not expect US taxpayers to bail them out again.' This is wrong on so many levels! To start with, the whole investment system is built from risks and rewards. Wall Street should continue to take risks. Wall Street should eat the consequences when they fail. I whined and complained about the Bush bailout, as did many conservatives, because I believed it would foster an environment of irresponsibility. I opposed the Obama bailout for the same reason. This is like a parent telling their child they really mean it this time. What an enabler! How dare he criticize the irresponsibility he's helped create.

The article also talks about the new powers Obama wants to give to the federal reserve bank, to be able to seize private banks whose collapse might hurt the economy. Wow. Wow. Just Wow.

'Mr Obama said that his recovery was bearing fruit and had "prevented layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers, police officers and other essential public servants".' I guess the government sticks by government employees. Seriously. There's a lot to be said for the old spendulus package joke.

All in all, I just feel like the president, and in fact most politicians, even most media pundits, are on a very different page than I am, perhaps even in a different book. I feel that even most Republican politicians have a fundamentally different value set than I do. It seems to me as though both the D's and the R's are just trying to use big government to advance their agenda, whereas my agenda is to limit government. Third party, are we there yet?