If you thought passage of last week’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout meant Congress would get out of Washington, you’re not that lucky. Determined to pin the credit crunch on free markets, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has announced a [1] whole month’s worth of hearings in the House Oversight and Government Reform on the “financial meltdown.” For Waxman and his fellow travelers on the left, the past two weeks mark [2] the collapse of capitalism due to deregulation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, by every quantifiable measure, regulation has increased under President Bush:

• Money spent by federal regulatory agencies is [3] up to $44.9 billion in 2007 from $27 billion in 2001, a 44% increase.
• Total people employed by federal regulatory agencies is [4] up to 244,000 in 2007 from 172,000 in 2001, a 41% increase.
• Total number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations is [5] up more than 4,500 pages since Bush took office.
• Cost imposed on Americans is [6] more than $28 billion in new regulations since Bush took office.

In total, [7] the federal government imposes a nearly $1.1 trillion regulatory burden on the American people every year. Many of these regulations are justified. Providing transparency and creating information are value-added government functions. Regulation is not per se inconsistent with market principles. Some reinforce property rights and market mechanisms.

But creating a massive government duopoly in the residential real estate market does not reinforce market mechanisms. It perverts them, and it perverts them to such a degree that some estimate that [8] Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae purchased more than a third of the $3 trillion in junk mortgages created during the housing bubble. They did so because heavy government regulation required them to push as much money into questionable mortgage buyers as possible. As Ronald Reagan said in his 1981 inaugural address: “[9] Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

The free market needs defenders like Reagan now more than ever. As Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby [10] writes today:

[B]laming deregulation for the financial mess is misguided. But it is dangerous, too, because one of the big challenges for the next president will be to defend markets against the inevitable backlash that follows this crisis. Even before finance went haywire, the Doha trade negotiations had collapsed; wage stagnation for middle-class Americans had raised legitimate questions about whom the market system served; and the food-price spike had driven many emerging economies to give up on global agricultural markets as a source of food security. Coming on top of all these challenges, the financial turmoil is bound to intensify skepticism about markets. Framing the mess as the product of deregulation will make the backlash nastier.

The American people still believe in this message. According to Rasmussen Reports, [11] 59% of Americans agree with Reagan’s verdict that government is the problem. But that does not mean we should abolish government; just keep it limited to a smaller role. In that same address, Reagan also said: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”

By Richard Berry

My cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions.  The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance -- have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them). 

Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system.  This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case.  The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.

We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned.  Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage.  Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands.  Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system.  However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation.  These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms.  Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude. 

The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them.  So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at.  In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple.  It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter.  We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package. 

Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups?  How dare we!  Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes?  Leave the room!  

This is all merely typical of the smug, cocksure Boomer Elite.  This is a group that breaks things.  It has set the wrecking ball to institutions that are the essential glue of our society (marriage and the family), the basis of our political system (federalism and the separation of powers), the engine of our prosperity (the free market), the guarantor of our freedom (the military), and the glory of our history (the Constitution, participatory democracy). 

Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world.  Whenever a Hollywood celebutard mouths some perfect imbecility in front of a camera, it is sure to be done from a five star resort hotel or on the red carpet of one of those absurdly frequent self-congratulation festivals.  The silk tie, moussed hair crowd on Wall Street is no better.  If the extent of the naked short selling, self dealing and market manipulation that has actually gone on these last few years were ever to become generally known, it would indict this crew all by itself.  And it cannot be said enough: this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party.  The cigar chomping, pin-striped caricature of a GOP money man has been false to the Wall Street facts for some time, though the left continues to furiously peddle that image.

The Boomer Elite's tired liberal nostrums are continually falsified by reality but, more and more embittered by the refusal of the world to conform to their dictates, they double down, trying to impose more lefty palliatives upon us, measures sure to be flatly unconstitutional, un-American, and disastrously counterproductive all at once.  This is a blindly and viciously destructive cohort.  They have degraded our common culture, warped our constitution to suit their purposes, and stand ready to subvert our very nationhood to the pipe dream of the Euro-left.  Now they have brought our economy to the brink. 

This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both.  On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible.  On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise.   The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations.  It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.

Some of the sane knew it all along, but for many others a stunning realization is only now dawning.  Much of the vaunted wealth creation of the last 20 years was a mirage, and the ballyhooed processes of wealth creation were themselves largely a scam, no more than the discounted cash flow of the borrowed future.

We must shudder to think how little of our civilization may remain standing when the Boomer Elite finally, mercifully, passes from the scene.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/the_great_boomer_comeuppance.html at October 05, 2008 - 11:37:20 AM EDT

http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/destroying-liberty.html

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat its serious mistakes. Today some have asked if we could have another 1929-like depression. No, it should not happen.

 

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat its serious mistakes. Today some have questioned whether we could have another 1929-style Depression. The answer is no — at least, it shouldn't happen.

Then we had over 25% unemployment; now it's 6% and could move somewhat higher, which is typical for economic corrections. Then, by 1934 about one-half of mortgages were in default, today it is only 6%. Nearly 94% of homeowners are still making their monthly payments.

View larger image

America is far bigger today, more diversified, productive, innovative and resilient and the government's rescue package will help stabilize our banking credit system and economy for the benefit of all Americans. The price of oil and other commodities has topped, so interest rates can and should be lowered, helping all consumers.

Understanding history now is absolutely vital: How did we get where we are? What was the real cause, what were the true reasons behind our current subprime real estate loan mess — and not what politicians are now attempting to falsely claim? Finally, what are the most serious threats America will face in the next five years?

The reason we shouldn't have another 1929 is our Nasdaq composite (the stock index that includes America's modern-day entrepreneurial leaders) already had its 1929-like break in the three years from 2000 through 2002. Since then it put in a strong five-year recovery up to last November. That recovery was due to the broad-based, and highly successful, tax cuts pushed through by President Bush in 2001 and 2003. We are now in the midst of a normal cyclical market correction, with the economy having created 9 million jobs since the 2003 tax cuts.

The Nasdaq's price action since the 1990s, like clockwork, closely parallels, tracks, and eerily replicates the Dow Jones Industrials' wild speculative run-up to its 1929 bubble peak, the ensuing three-year, 88% collapse to the Depression lows in June 1932, followed by the recovery run-up to 1937 and the ensuing sharp correction. Based on historical data, today's market is likely to be a repeat of 1938 — not 1929.

To show what we mean, the accompanying chart overlays the Nasdaq index from the early 1990s to October 2008 with the Dow industrials chart from the early 1920s to the end of 1942.

Maybe you're surprised to see these two indexes seem so remarkably similar — both their up cycles and their down cycles. The reason for this is simple: while technology continually changes, human nature remains the same. The stock market is human nature on daily display, and history continually repeats itself.

Psychologically, the roaring 1920s were just like our "anything goes 1990s." America had just won World War I (the war to end all wars). It was the auto and airplane age, the radio was invented and speakeasies boomed.

Likewise, in the 1990s we had just won the Cold War when the 70-year-old Soviet Union disintegrated onto the ash heap of history as Ronald Reagan's successful policy of "we win, they lose" replaced containment and the nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction — dubbed "MAD."

The "peace dividend" resulting from sharp cuts in defense spending helped Bill Clinton achieve a balanced budget. It was the new age of the Internet, biotech and high tech stocks. For nearly five years, prices on the Nasdaq soared. Indeed, to its peak the Nasdaq increased 2 1/2 times what the Dow Jones industrials did during its 1920s climax run.

But those astronomical Nasdaq price gains culminated in the Clinton stock market bubble, which burst in early 2000. Within the space of months, an estimated $8 trillion in U.S. stock market wealth was erased.

So how did we get where we are now? What was the real true cause of the current subprime real estate debacle that endangered not only our entire financial system, but put so many lower income people out of their homes and forced the government to an emergency rescue package?

Every American should know the truth about who engineered the rules for this extraordinary mess so that we all learn a valuable lesson. We need to be much smarter the next time around.

In 1977, President Carter and a Democrat Congress created the Community Reinvestment Act mandating that banks must meet the credit needs of everyone in the banks' community, including uncreditworthy borrowers. It was done for a good social purpose and had the greatest intentions — expanding home ownership. And, through the 1980s and into the 1990s at least, it seemed to work.

However in 1995, President Bill Clinton imposed more and stronger regulations and performance tests. These coerced banks into significantly increasing their loans to low-income borrowers in economically-troubled communities, or face possible fines and expansion restrictions.

These new rules encouraged banks to bundle their risky subprime loans together with prime loans and re-sell them in packages to other financial institutions, thereby freeing the original lenders from any further risk. Thanks to the new rules and oversight from the CRA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got involved in a big way, buying literally trillions of dollars of the questionable loans from banks and feeding the dangerous cycle that had begun.

Eventually, it turned into a kind of pyramid scheme that overwhelmed some lending organizations when housing prices softened in late 2006 and 2007.

So what's the big lesson to be learned here by the public? That this financial crisis was the result of yet another Big Government program that had great intentions but created devastating unintended consequences that hurt millions of people.

It was not the fault of African American groups, which naturally want to help their people. Nor was it the fault of America's free enterprise system, or a lack of enough regulation. No, it was Big Government once again trying to run a private industry.

You can't take one dollar and loan it 50 times. Watch out when Big Government spenders tell you they can run our entire medical industry, give you far better care and save you lots of money.

 

I hear the talking heads on Fox tell each other that the Bailout Deal had to be done because not do it would have caused a depression makes me feel they don’t get it. The great depression was caused by over active lefty government and a few greedy people on Wall Street. It wasn’t caused by us poor unwashed masses in flyover country.

In 1929 when Franklin Roosevelt went to Television to explain how the government was going to screw up the world’s economy for 12 years my family missed the show. Capitalism works, government intervention in the accompaniment of out right fraud on behalf of an unconstitutional quasi-governmental agency   doesn’t. Us rubes out in the boonies want to see perp walks of the thieves even if God forbid, some of them don’t look like me. This PC BS must stop now.

When our leaders follow the path of the no pain for comfort economy at the expense of our Constitution makes me feel that my birthright has been sold for pennies on the dollar.

Why didn’t you fix it? Why did you wait until just before the election? Maybe the best question is for President Bush, why do you trust the wrong people and don’t trust the tried and true proven principles of the free market?

 

I’m not suggesting that firing squads are being formed. So called truth squads are. Leader worship is now in vogue. I am suggesting that people being controlled by fear has been the natural order of the world until the founding of our country.

It’s time to fight. It’s time to name names, tell the truth our future and forget the softheaded notions of compassionate conservativism.

This is the war for the America.

By MICHELLE EASTON | Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Regardless of how well Sarah Palin does in Thursday's debate, conservatives would be astounded if the major media acknowledged her success.

For the most part, the media have decided the appropriate response to the governor is to sneer, and sneering at great conservative leaders, from Ronald Reagan to Rush Limbaugh, has been a liberal pastime for decades.

What makes Gov. Palin unique from the other three candidates in this race is she seems so normal. She worked her way through college, married a good local guy, stayed home with her children for several years and has an impressive professional resume as well.

Millions of Americans never really related to Hillary Clinton on a personal level, what with her Wellesley and Yale education and lobbying/legal work.

Then there was her sticking with Bill while he womanized. It made women wrinkle their brows and question her judgment, even as they noted her hard work to promote liberal ideas.

Katie Couric is a master sneerer. She's never done a fair interview with a conservative woman — ever. It's hard to imagine why campaign strategists waste Palin's time preparing for and sitting through Couric's brand of liberal "gotcha" journalism.

Couric's half-lidded eyes and unbearable condescension toward a woman whose achievements, personal and professional, are so superior to her own were excruciating to watch. But we could have predicted Couric's disparaging questions and snide looks before the interview aired.

Viewership of Couric's "CBS Evening News" show has been in the tank ever since she took over. Letting her interview Palin elevated attention for Couric in a way she couldn't do on her own.

Palin should stop wasting time on mainline media interviews that are predisposed to be critical. She should spend her time addressing the crowds of tens of thousands who want to see her whenever they can.

If press interviews are granted, the criterion should be: "Has the interviewer ever done a fair interview with a conservative woman?" That would save the governor a lot of energy and let her share her message with the millions of Americans hungry to hear more from her.

Liberals are extraordinarily chagrined that the first woman in 24 years to be on a national ticket isn't Hillary, but a conservative. And while they critique and disrespect Palin with gusto, they underestimate the backlash of support they've created for her, even from many Americans who don't think of themselves as conservatives.

Grandmother of the radical feminist movement Gloria Steinem (famous for saying "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle") went after Sarah by saying, "This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need."

This was an insult to the millions of women who admire both Palin and McCain. These admirers say, "Yes, McCain's years of experience mean he is old enough to be her father, and so what? She has been elected a mayor and governor, and he hasn't."

Millions of Americans had only marginal interest in this year's campaign until Palin joined the ticket.

Make no mistake: The left-wing criticism of Sarah Palin is not an honest look at her readiness, but a criticism of her core values and her Reaganesque philosophical conservatism. For liberals, a movement conservative will never be ready.

Palin's answer to those who question her readiness should be: "I don't know every issue. And I didn't know every issue when I became governor of Alaska. But 80% of the people of the state approve of my work."

I had to roll my eyes at an offer in the latest Virginia NOW newsletter. It read: "Great Gift Idea!! The Margaret doll and T-shirt. Margaret, Dennis the Menace's nemesis, wears a T-shirt that says: 'Someday a woman will be president.' "

You'd think a national organization claiming to represent women would be offering a Sarah Palin doll sporting a T-shirt saying, "Someday a woman will be president."

Like all the sneering critics in the national media, NOW sneers at Palin because it gets behind only liberal, not conservative, women.

Easton is on leave of absence as president of the Herndon, Va.-based Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, which promotes conservative women.

By C. Edmund Wright

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/time_for_mccain_to_name_names.html at October 01, 2008 - 02:53:24 PM EDT