“It’s financial socialism, and it’s un-American"

"We cannot make bad mortgages go away. We cannot make the losses that our financial institutions are facing go away. Someone must take those losses. We can either let the people who made bad decisions bear the consequences of their actions, or we can spread that pain to others. And that is exactly what the Secretary proposes to do—take Wall Street's pain and spread it to the taxpayers."

Those words were uttered by Jim Bunning, a retired Hall of Fame pitcher and a Republican senator from Kentucky. Bunning was, of course, speeaking in reference to the $700 billion bail-out plan proposed by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke. While it's hard for me to agree with one of the Senate's most conservative voices, the old right-hander threw a fastball right down the middle with this assessment. (Bunning also said some crap about how we'll be celebrating Bastille Day next year instead of the 4th of July. I can't really hang with that.)

On the real, though, I can't think of anything more un-American than the government intervening in the financial markets on such a large scale. It seems completely opposed to everything that I've learned (not a whole lot, to be completely honest) about capitalism and the free market. When companies and individuals make mistakes in this type of environment, they're supposed to be punished, right? The stronger entities will rise up and wash out the weaker ones, keeping the waters refreshed, if you'll allow me to employ a metaphor, just like the tides keep the oceans and beaches, relatively, clean and livable.



Well, there's been some sort of red tide in the water this time around and somebody has to help out.



Too much deregulation, too many mistakes, something bad is going on and we need the big guns to step in and throw some billions around. I think we can all see that. But are Americans, especially those who have been smart about their money for the last decade or so, really ready for this new reality?

I guess they really don't have a choice. The same people that have been smart about their money are the same people that understand that if you don't pay your taxes, the IRS will hunt your ass down, even if you were in New Jack City.



In any case, it's pretty ironic that this Neo-Conservative/Republican administration that we've had for the past eight years, will, ultimately, be remembered, domestically, for enacting, maybe, the most socialistic set of laws and practices in this country's history. At least since FDR.



But, I guess it does make a bit of sense in thinking about all the changes and distortions that Bush and the gang have presided over since 2000. Eight years ago, the U.S. didn't torture its prisoners and it had a flourishing capilalistic economy. Now we're a financially broken quasi-socialist evil empire with working dungeons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.

There comes a point in politics--and this administration has found this point--when left and right don't matter anymore. It just merges toward the middle right around scary.