Gentle Readers,
As you well know by now, the Senate voted yesterday to hijack your wallets. Since most of us were spared the indignity of High School Civics classes, I want to point out that the Constitution clearly states that spending bills MUST originate in the House of Representatives, not the US Senate.
To circumvent the process, the Senate amended a bill that the House of Representatives has already approved. A handy little trick and a perfect illustration of my position that the entire legal facade, from traffic court to the Supreme Court, is about tricks and technicalities rather than the pursuit of justice.
There is a glimmer of hope though, the bill goes back to the House for a vote on the 450 pages of changes.
After the vote.....
Democrat senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a leading architect of the bill, said he understood people wanted to "stick a finger in the eye of the bankers and tycoons".
No, Senator Dodd, we want to stick our finger in YOUR eye as you are the primary villain responsible for this catastrophe. As Kent has pointed out, it is you who should be answering questions, not asking them. And let's not even get into your cup that overfloweth with two decades of Freddy Mac's bling.
Long story short, Dodd and the Democrat party stopped mortgage reform dead in it's tracks in 2005. That legislation would have prevented Fannie and Freddy from holding 20% of their assets in junk mortgages by requiring that borrowers actually be credit worthy.
Here's a three minute primer on how this came about.
TWC acknowledges that the presentation tends to paint Senator McCain in a favorable light. IMO, it is undeserved in light of his putting the arm on House Republicans this morning in a desperate search of the elusive Ayes on behalf of the bailout effort. Yet, it is also indisputable that McCain supported reform when it was apparent that we needed it.
Burning Down The House: Another, longer, primer on our economic problems.
Finally, excerpts from the 2004 hearings into the practices of Fanny and Freddy.....
More than one email correspondent has called this a McCain Hit Piece, which implies a bias or lack of truth. The video may, in fact, be exactly that. However, clever editing notwithstanding, reality is exactly what it is.
This mess is an illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The good intentions of government social engineering gone horribly, but predictably, wrong.
Owning a home is a fine thing for a family. All we really wanted to do at the outset was to help regular folks by offering government guarantees so banks would make long term mortgages at decent interest rates.
Instead, we created a volatile real estate market that just crashed and burned for the third or fourth time since 1970.
Without fundamental changes in the way Americans view the role of government, it will happen again.
TWC, whatever do you mean?
I mean that the role of government is not to ensure that Americans have Little Pink Houses with convenient, low interest mortgages.
As Ever,
TWC
Tip of the glass to Kent C, Husbone, The Bidinotto Blog
Photo Credit (unless otherwise noted): ©TWC, all rights reserved
