If there is a sliver of conservatism still remaining in Washington, D.C., it can be found in the U.S. House of Representatives.
This afternoon, the House failed to spend $700 billion to bail out greed and mismanagement on Wall Street. Consider it a $700 billion tax cut because every American would have had to cover the debt to the tune of $2,325 in the event the stop-gap measure failed to work because nothing was being done to prevent the money from falling into the black hole of big business. Little was being done to correct the factors that lead to the financial meltdown in the first place. The proposal before Congress was little more than plugging a hole in a dam with chewing gum.
The outright fraud that has been committed against the people of the United States by government-backed mortgage companies is criminal. I certainly hope Congress will conduct hearings and that the executive branch will hold those government officials at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac -- and their accomplices in the private sector -- accountable with special jail cells in nice federal prisons.
I don't know about you, but I am getting just a bit irritated that the U.S. government selectively comes to the aid of certain businesses and industries, and hands all of us the tab.
On Saturday, Congress passed a $25 billion bailout for U.S. automakers. Now, isn't the RV industry suffering, too? I guess RV-related jobs aren't quite as important as protecting the union-backed jobs of U.S. automakers who routinely tell Americans to just buy their cars and shut up about it. Washington has bailed out U.S. automakers so many times in the last 20 years that I can't keep track of all the money the government has pumped into protecting the jobs of people who produce products consumers don't like and don't want.
Now I guess in addition to the $2,000 factored into the price of every new car to cover the health insurance benefits of retired automakers, taxpayers will have to pitch in $83 per person to keep the union workers at their jobs on election day.
Congress gives the auto industry $25 billion the day after Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman collected $19 million for 18 days of work. He received an $8 million signing bonus for agreeing to take over the company in a deal that included a $11 million severance package should he ever be terminated. When the bank failed 18 days after he took it over, he walked away with more money than many RV dealerships generate in sales over a two- or three-year period.
Businesses throughout Main Street USA are struggling because of a lack of consumer confidence thanks to a media- and politically-inspired economic crisis designed to secure a "regime change" in Washington in November. But, instead of a bailout to help small business -- which is the genuine and reliable economic engine of our nation -- we are told it's our patriotic duty to bailout millionaires on Wall Street, which employs nobody but financial analysts who get people worked up to buy or sell certain stocks, and the brokers who complete the transactions.
Excuse me, but aren't most of the companies experiencing big financial problems the same brokerage firms that generated 20 percent returns, or more, for years at a level everyone in the world knew was unsustainable? And, unlike bank deposits, aren't securities a risk product? That means that holders of that security may lose everything they invested. It's a risk investors have been willing to take for hundreds of years in order to get more than the 0.15 percent interest offered by banks on savings accounts.
If this country gets to the point where we have to guarantee no losses on investment, we might as well kiss capitalism goodbye. Then innovators and entrepreneurs can submit their pitches to some government office and spend a few years wading through oceans of red tape to get permission to build a risk-free product or provide a risk-free service.
To heck with learning Spanish. Can anyone speak French? It's the preferred language of socialists worldwide.