Nationalizing Failure

I am not so sure that "financial crisis" is as real or as bad the media and the government wants us to believe. Sure, there is a problem. But, let's just consider the fact that yesterday's Dow dropped 778 points. That sounds just terrible, doesn't it? But wait! When it comes to a PERCENTAGE drop in the Dow yesterday isn't even in the top ten! I don't remember Katie Couric mentioning that fact last night!

I don't know about you, but with every day that passes I'm starting to doubt that this crisis is as dire as they say it is.

The proper answer here is to let private institutions that make bad decisions fail. No government bailout. The only one mitigating factor in favor of intervention might be the Congress' involvement in the Community Reinvestment Act and support for various community groups who used those laws to browbeat private institutions into making bad loans.

The plain fact of the matter is that the Federal Government is in the process of nationalizing failure. Under the ideals being tossed around on Capitol Hill profits would belong to private businesses and losses would belong to the taxpayers.

Advice

The company I work for leases office space in a building. We share some "common-areas" with some other tenants. An older guy who works for one of the other tenants as a "gopher," is a great guy. He is very friendly and personable but I don't think he is quite "all there."

Anyway, when we pass in the hallway and exchange pleasantries, he keeps calling me "Rick." So, do I correct him and tell him my real name? If so, how do I do it without embarrassing him?

The "Common Sense" Fix to the Economy

Dave Ramsey has written a three point proposal for getting cash back into the market at a fraction of the cost of the bail-out.

The proposal is one page with bullet points. It makes a lot of sense.

STOCKS PLUMMET!!!!

The media goes into hysteria as the stock market drops after the House votes to NOT bailout the banking industry.

WHAT A SHOCKER!!!

It only makes sense that the stock market would drop. See, the stock market it just an indicator of how confident people are in the economy. The fact that we were talking about a bailout show that there is a problem. Why would people be confident? The only thing keeping it from happening it earlier was the hope that the government would resurrect the banking industry. Although why people would be anymore confident when the government 's finger is in the middle is beyond me.

So, people LOST confidence in the economy a couple of weeks ago. The market didn't show that loss because of a pending government bailout. When the bailout didn't happen, the people were able to act on the confidence they lost weeks ago.

It will be important to note that the stock market didn't crash today because government failed to act. It failed TODAY because the government promised to act weeks ago. The promise of "doing something" only delayed what should have happened...

Let's see how many pundits point that out. (I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you).

Is the Economic Bailout Wise?

While preparing announcement and scripture slides for church tomorrow, I ran across a scripture slide I made a while back. It made me smile thinking about Congress' current plan to help the economy. My main view is that a bailout is short-sighted; it will fix the problem here today, but will cause many more problems in the future. Man that sounds an awful lot like this scripture:

Proverbs 11:15