No Federal Bailouts!

Many people are insisting that the government has to bail out AIG because, in the current situation, if the government didn't step in, the result could be a worldwide depression. I understand that. I still think it's the wrong thing to do.

If the government doesn't bail them out, we're going to have an economic crisis. But we're going to have one anyway, whether they bail them out or not. The money with which the government bails out these failed institutions will be borrowed from other countries. Then the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for not only the bailouts, but the interest on the money to bail them out. And, when the bill comes due to the taxpayers, where will all that money be going?

The situation is going to get worse, whichever way we play the cards. But the way in which it gets worse will be different, depending on what we do now. And that's important. Because our nation's future depends on it. Do we want to let a failed system collapse, knowing it will have a seismic impact on the whole world economy? That would be bad. Or do we want to indenture our nation's future to other powers whose interests are not necessarily aligned with ours? What other option is there?

This whole gigantic mess was caused by wide scale irresponsible borrowing. How is borrowing on an inconceivably more massive scale going to solve the problem? We are already the biggest debtor nation in the world.

Liberals are quick to blame it all on capitalism, but what actually got us here was government meddling. Further government meddling isn't going to get us out. For years, the Fed kept interest rates low deliberately to fuel the housing bubble. It was a specific federal policy intended to make it easier for first time homebuyers to be able to buy homes they couldn't otherwise afford. (Now strike the word "otherwise" from that sentence, and there's the root of the problem.)

Federal policy was designed to encourage overspending. It was a government-subsidized Ponzi scheme, with the FHA, FannieMae, and FreddieMac at the top of the heap, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. taxpayer. All accountability was shuffled away, through multiple layers of loan aggregation. When people started defaulting on loans that should never have been made, and institutions started defaulting on their debts to other institutions, speculation on defaults (aka "swaps") to hedge the bad bets became rampant. (That's what brought down AIG.)

The entire economy, from the top down, is built on debt. At the bottom of the pyramid are millions of individuals borrowing from banks, who borrow from government sponsored agencies, while the government borrows from foreign countries, granting them financial power to wield over us in the future. Even as individuals are going bankrupt from bad debt, the nation is sinking ever deeper into deficit spending. The problem is systemic. The madness has to stop.

This country is headed for disaster because of fiscal irresponsibility at every level, encouraged by those who think the government can just manipulate the economy a little bit more, just another tweak here or another pinch there. A push here or a squeeze there. But it's all an illusion as long as the debt keeps growing.

Debt is dangerous. We are selling our sovereignty, like a drunken wastrel squandering his children's inheritance. Our deficit spending increases exponentially decade after decade. The national debt balloons. Instead of having any plan to pay it off, we keep borrowing more.

Stop the presses! (The ones printing up the dollars, that is.) Stop the borrowing. Stop the spending. Stop overregulating industry and labor so corporations have to send jobs overseas to stay competitive. Stop the subsidies for farmers not to grow crops. Stop all the greasy earmarks. Stop foreign aid. We need our leaders to sit down and acknowledge the fact that the nation is broke -- worse than broke. We have a negative net worth!

We cannot go on as we have been. That's a fallacy. Prolonging the inevitable just gets us deeper in the hole we're going to have to eventually dig ourselves out of. Let's stop now, and start demanding fiscal responsibility from our leaders and ourselves.

People don't learn from their mistakes. They learn from the consequences of their mistakes. If you shield them from the consequences, they'll make the same mistakes again. I say, no bailouts for lenders or borrowers or gamblers with other people's money! Let the market correct itself, as painful as that correction will be, and then laissez-faire.

By: NotYourDaddy

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NotYourDaddy is a conservative libertarian who believes in free will and the free market. NYD thinks the role of the government is to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens. Stop there. NYD's attitude toward ever-expanding government can best be summed up by snarling "Get your hand out of my pocket and leave me alone!" Visit NotYourDaddy's blog at Government is Not Your Daddy.