George Rebane
It is very clear that the rock apes are in charge of the zoo we call Washington DC, and the BS continues to flow across the land repeating the screed that free market capitalism is no longer working. Everybody except the Hopeful Change Democrats are to blame for the current financial crisis. In the docket remains former President Bush who is accused of starting this recession single-handedly with perhaps a little help from the greedy capitalists on Wall Street. Anyone who points out the almost thirty years of the government’s distortion of the American housing market is put into a pen with the other unrepentant “ideologues” who are beyond help. For a quick review of some history, please see this.
(Quiz for the well-grounded reader – why is this evidence not referenced every time Congress tries to put blame someplace else? What equivalent evidence exists for the charge that Bush and company hindered government oversight of the financial industry starting with GSEs like Fannie and Freddie?)
And the big lie continues as it must. For this is the great age of government expansion, and NOTHING will be allowed to stand in the way. First you mangle the markets, then watch the capitalists attempt to game it, and when they crash and burn, you scream that we need even more government to fix the problem. The way ahead is well marked – no matter the duration, pain, and cost, we will continue to be stimulated whether we like it or not.
And when the 700 pages of HR1 (aka American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – 76 page short form here) of the Obama $900B stimulus bill is examined, it quickly becomes apparent that this is nothing more than taking money out of the private sector – today and forever – in order to spread pork across the land. Contrary to Larry Summers’ dictum that the stimulus should be “targeted, timely, and temporary”, it is none of these. Upon closer examination, this bag of bovine scat is at best an earmark-ladened, slow boat to China – and they may even refuse to pay for any of it. As Henninger points out in today’s WSJ (‘What is Congress Stimulating?’), this is mostly government doing some “self-stimulation” – perhaps even the kind that will grow hair on your palms.
In the grand progress of the rush to ruin, this morning we woke to headlines outlining President Obama’s latest outrage against the evils of executive compensation. According to his dictum, government will now set the compensation limits on pay and benefits for executives of the bailed out corporations. Now I’m not a big fan of the overpaid empty suits who manage most of those companies, but I am afraid that Obama and Congress will not stop there as they hear the bleating of their approving herd. It will be mighty tempting for the Barney/Nancy/Harry club to ride this momentum to legislate executive pay scales for all publicly traded companies. That will give ‘off shoring’ a whole new meaning. Stay tuned.
[update – For the more sensitive readers who thought my ‘rock apes’ appellation may have been too strong, I offer tonight’s advance notice of tomorrow’s news as reported by Fox News, Nightly Business Report (PBS), and Reuters here. It seems that our government financial mavens have already overspent by $78,000,000,000 (yep, that’s billions), or more than 44%, for assets of banks that were included in the TARP1 bailout. These are the turkeys from the same flock who will be leading the country out of this recession by wisely spending what appears to be an amount that will knock the bejeezus out of the next trillion dollar bill that we all will wind up paying for. And they’re bitching and moaning about the mistakes of the empty suits on Wall Street! The only bad part about these visually impaired feds leading the blind is that the government foggies have the hubris and the force of arms to back up their mistakes – we have no choice but to go along.]
rebanesruminations.com 
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