Well, they kinda listened. What a cool thing it was that representatives voted down a measure that was practically a sure thing because of the feedback they received from their constituents. Listening to the media, you would have thought they were cows being led to the slaughter. I've had it with the media. They are painting this to make it look like the general public doesn't know what we're talking about. We're the dumb idiots who don't realize the implications of our outrage at providing billions of dollars we don't have to people who took a chance and lost.
None of what is on the media gets to the point of anything. More money won't solve the problem. We are a nation of debtors. We rely on credit today more than we ever have. The whole idea of credit is pretty ridiculous. I'm reminded of Wimpy on Popeye. He was always pleading for "a burger today, that I will gladly pay you for tomorrow." Sometimes you have to suck it up and actually work for something. (Here's an article published almost a year ago, which is oddly foresightful about our current mess: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IK21Dj01.html)
Beyond the credit crisis is a deeper crisis of leadership. All of the financial markets are now victim of a thing called fear. I'm amazed that no one sees the correlation between what Wall Street thinks will happen and the prices of the stocks they trade. When the media says the Congress is going to dump a bunch of money into Wall Street, stocks go up. When the bill fails stocks go down. Why? Because people make decisions based on fear. Wall Street is no exception.
What happened to the days when the president came before the nation and said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Or "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Granted these sayings were both said by Democrats, and I hardly consider myself a staunch liberal. More to the point, both of these go beyond party politics. They reminded Americans that we are something more than the current crisis we face. We built this nation into what it is not by promising to make good on a debt sometime in the future, but by using every resource we had to make something work. We need a leader who will remind us that we can be better, that this too will pass, and that there is hope in our future. Most importantly we need someone who will do more than just pay lip service to our hopes and dreams.
I'm tired of the blame game and the currency of despair we face every day. No wonder people get discouraged by the news and politics. I think we all need to make a point to find something positive in our lives to remind ourselves that life is a beautiful thing.
Enough of my soap box. For those of you reading this, thanks for your patience while I have vented my opinions about these things.
3 days ago
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2 comments:
Thanks for reading my blog and offer your thoughts above.
First off, I agree this was a failure of leadership … our MBA-President who likes to say that he’s the “Educator-in-Chief” failed to explain this is a liquidity problem.
Yes, there are problems with proposal, but this legislation was a lot better than Paulsen’s proposal. There was some oversight (like that’s worked during the Bush years) but the spending was in piece meals (although the idea that the President could say he needed it was not a good enough justification for me.)
The problem is that we are a debtor nation. People buy houses in order to maintain a tax deduction … in Sweden more people own their own home plus vacation homes and boats because they have the mindset to “save and pay” instead of “borrow”. Businesses do not maintain cash to fund their operations … they borrow on the open market and extend credit … that’s the critical liquidity problem that will affect a business getting cash to make payrolls, etc. We’ve had a money market fail and too many banks with problems.
The vote was based more on “political” reasons than its economic merit. When I looked at how the votes stacked up, it was obvious that many voted based on November than ideology. The Dems who voted Yes were people like John Hall and Mike Acuri of New York (as in Wall Street), while many other freshman legislators voted NO. CQ Politics confirmed my observation http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002966213&cpage=1 The recent polls in Kentucky indicating that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was in trouble, was probably just the push these shaky incumbents needed.
My guess is that if this legislation started in the Senate that it would have passed easily. Heck, even Tom (Dr. NO) Coburn (R-OK) was in favor of it.
It will be up to those in “safe districts” and “retiring” Congressmen, like Minnesota’s Jim Ramstad, to change their vote in the next offering …. Those that voted based on politics will not change until after November.
This is a really complicated issue. I've been listening to the news a lot about this and one thing I heard that was really interesting-- "We won't ever be able to find out what the 'other' decision will lead us to." Wouldn't it be nice if we could experiment and then go back and make the right decision?
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