"We Must Act Now . . ."

" . . . to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk," President Bush said at a press conference this morning. He continued, "There will be ample opportunity to discuss the origins of this problems. Now is the time to solve it"

I disagree. Now is the time to solve it. Now is also the time to discuss how in the hell the greed and stupidity of American banks have nearly pulled our economy into an authentic depression. A crisis this big, this far-reaching should have been headed off at the pass.

As you can see from Bush's press conference, our government is in full reactionary mode right now. They didn't see this coming, even though they should have. I'm not sure what Cox and the SEC does day in and day out, but apparently it's not monitoring the health and behavior of our nation's banks. And so now the federal government plans to buy up all the bad loans, save the banks from themselves. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me since these genius banks are the ones that issued the bad loans in the first place, plunging us into full tilt economic crisis.

The Stock Market loves the news of the government bailout, of course, because investors smell taxpayers taking the hit that was aimed squarely between their eyes. Where does it end though? If banks know the government will bail them out whenever they're about to topple, what possible incentive do they have to clean up their act? My Dad owns a small business, a muffler shop in South Dakota. It's struggling right now, mostly due to the sluggish economy. Will the government step in and buy my Dad out when the shop goes under? Of course not. It's a market economy. The market decides. Except where banks are concerned. All bets are off with them apparently. Unlike my Dad and his muffler shop, banks get all of the profits with none of the risk. I guess I'd love those investment conditions too, but that's not exactly under a free market. That falls well short of capitalist practices. And it can't last. The United States government does not have limitless resources. Taxpayers can't continue paying the debt of the stupid and the greedy.

What the Federal government can do is move into the national banking system, wielding a big, huge stick. Since the free market has largely been abandoned with bailout after bailout, it's more than appropriate to get some goddamn oversight into what the hell these suits are doing. I'm the biggest proponent of the free market system. It's a proven economic philosophy. But until this situation is reigned in, the source of the problem properly identified, and solid regulation put in place to prevent it happening again, I want an outside force running the show. If that means Bush and Congress, then so be it.

I can't believe it's come to this.