The American Spectator

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Snooty Katie

9.29.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 4)

The bailout will go through, whether the people like it or not. We can only hope that any money that Congressmen made from these financial giants went into mutual funds so that they can share our pain. Good job, guys.
-- Michael Tobias

There appears to be a lot of culpability in the subprime banking mess and it's not easy to understand where the ultimate blame lies with all the finger-pointing going on. Tell me if I'm wrong but from here, at a distance, it looks like it started with congressional Democrats who wanted to put low income people into homes. They made taxpayer money available and pressured banks to make loans to these unqualified people. Once government fingers were in it, this fortune of available money was used to profit corrupt and greedy government insiders who had been entrusted with stewarding the people's money. Wall Street is a capitalist institution and capitalism is amoral. Wall Street's job is to make as much money as it can legally, period; the morality of how it is made is the responsibility of the people who write the laws that Wall Street must obey, in this instance the same congressional Democrats who began the low income housing loan program in the first place, then blocked attempts at reform when government insider corruption and greed made it obvious that without it a financial catastrophe was certain.

Now Barack Obama is out there obsessing about the Bush administration's failure to regulate Wall Street when the problem was never with Wall Street, it has always been with the Democrats in Congress who refused to regulate themselves knowing full well what was coming, at a time when they could have saved us all from this mess. This betrayal of the people by the people's government in Washington is shared by many but the greatest and most enraging culprits appear from here to be the congressional Democrats. If that is the case, then John McCain's candidacy could well hinge on his ability to reverse Obama's vigorous attempt to shift blame from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party and stick it where it belongs. The anger about this bailout is white hot and increasing. The political party left holding the bag will lose in November. Obama's economic and political positions on the bailout are a glass house that can be brought down by the truth about our betrayal by corrupt, greedy congressional Democrats and their insider allies if it is said clearly, often and without waver. Telling the truth over the upcoming weeks and particularly in the debate on the economy gives him the chance to pivot this election his way.

On the paranoid side, is it possible that the timing of this crisis was manipulated to occur at this point in the campaign?
-- Allen Hurt
New Mexico

This excellent piece reminds me of the old adage "Hi. We're from the government and we're here to help," which needs one last word to be properly illustrative: "...ourselves."

The piece brings to mind, also, one of my recent ponderings: What will historians make of Jamie Gorelick in 50 years and beyond? She having been a handmaiden to so much catastrophe?
-- Reid Bogie
Waterbury, Connecticut

PENNY HENNY
Re: Edward Sisson's Obama in the Tank for Pritzker:

Republicans in the House and Senate need to put faces on the current crisis in the banking industry. Those faces are Penny Pritzker, Franklin Raines and politicians like Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, etc. who've scuttled a booming economy in 2 years. There should be no compromise until Democrats agree to investigate and if necessary indict their own political hacks like Pritzker, Raines, Dodd, Schumer and Obama for perpetuating this mess.
-- Michael Tomlinson

Edward Sisson's revelations regarding Barack Obama's campaign finance chair won't matter an iota. Most Americans know very little about the kind of economics surrounding the banking crisis or the bailout. They've been told, despite all the evidence of Democratic malfeasance regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it's the Republicans fault. So far, they're buying it.

Here's a thought regarding the bailout: The federal budget in 2004 was 2.3 trillion dollars. In 2008, it is 3 trillion dollars. The difference? Seven hundred billion dollars. Does that number sound familiar?

Do we really need our political class to spend an average of ten thousand dollars apiece for every man, woman and child in America?
-- Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida

Excuse me, but the Pritzker family is paying nearly a half billion dollars of their own money to cover the losses from the Superior Bank failure. Who among today's bank owners, directors and managers is paying a dime to cover the losses over which they have presided?
-- David Sciacchitano

POLITICS WINS AGAIN
Re: W. James Antle III's Did Someone Say Amnesty?:

This titanic battle can be distilled into its simplest of elements. Does this nation do what's right economically, or does it do what's necessary politically? If it does what's right economically, it would take the bitter medicine Dr. (yes, he is a physician) Ron Paul prescribes: let the investment banks, insurance companies, their stockholders and CEO's pay by going down the black hole of bankruptcy. If it does what's necessary politically, it robs this nation's future to pay for its foolish, vain past. The die was cast with the passage during Carter's regime of the Community Reinvestment Act mandating sub-prime loans in 1977. No one in his right mind ever believed these loans would be repaid. It was a blatant political act of socialist redistribution. That single pernicious act has brought us to the precipice of calamity at the MOST inopportune time. The chickens have come home to roost right before the election of '08.

The dilemma: Does John McCain advocate what I believe is truly in his heart (Ron Paul's bitter medicine) and hand the election to Obama on a silver platter, or does he maneuver in the minefield between principle and political reality, asking, "What do I need to do to get elected?"

Letter to the Editor

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