Woe the Red

Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/2203982/

I am infuriated with the latest financial data for our nation's economy. The widespread fiscal irresponsibility of our legislature and private industry is truly reprehensible. The publication of the latest national economic data has been like the great disappointment of Dorothy when she pulled back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz was just a sad, little man. Except that no matter how much we'll try, we won't be able to get our economy back to Kansas with simple heel-clicking and hopeful wishing.

What would really make me pleased would be seeing those who ran our nation into such deep red to be strung up by their pocketbooks and dangled as bait in front of those who now suffer as a consequence. The election brought ideas of socialism into the forefront of conflict available for political fodder. It made me question the essential American attitude that capitalism should reign as king of the economy. For the last eight years, at least, the government seems to have sanctioned spending in the red as a valid budgetary practice. And as a result, private industry followed suit.

I want to know the names of the accounting agencies who failed to publish, accurately, the impending melt down of so many main-stay American businesses. Why were these companies allowed to behave so badly to the point of needing a bailout? Shouldn't previous quarterly financial statements have given ample warning to executives in time for them to make some effort at damage control? Since they chose not to do anything, the burden fell to taxpayers.
Which brings me back to those concerns over socialism. It would seem that when every citizen's contributed tax dollars are used for purposes of buying up foreclosures and taking bad debt ownership from banking institutions, that this, indeed, would be akin to every tax payer now owning a share of whatever corporation got bailed out. So if we all own a bit of this bank and that lending institution, then, assuming the bailout efforts help, once these corporations recover and regain their profitability, will every tax payer receive a dividend check? I highly doubt it.

Whoever decided that it would be alright if our national deficit exceeded a comprehensible number? I can't even imagine how much ten trillion dollars would look like, much less conceive of a way to pay it back. Didn't anyone in our elected legislature take an accounting class? Why weren't they subject to the same common sense as any commoner would be? If you do not have money to buy/fund/invest, then don't spend. Additionally I find it galling that the red, Republicans, who are supposed to be advocates of conservative fiscal spending, were the ones spending us right into the ground.

I resent that my tax dollars will be buying up bad mortgages everywhere when I do not even own a home myself. In fact, thanks to people who got mortgages and defaulted, it's unlikely that me and my husband are going to be able to consider buying a home anytime soon thanks to the credit freeze. Not that we can really try to save for one either since inflation is sky-rocketing the prices of even the basics like water and bread, and better paying jobs are like four-leaf clovers.

When I read Ray Fisman's article from slate.com about the ways political partisanship played a part in the bailout bill, I found my anger at the legislature intensify. Green should be the only color our country is concerned with instead of red verses blue. And I cannot fathom why lobbist groups are even allowed in Washington at this point. Where was the lobbyist group to protect the U.S. Treasury or the dollar's earning power? The FED should have the authority to restrict reckless legislative spending. The FED should have authority to do more than manipulate the interest rate. It is the only governmental body that has any concrete commonsense knowledge on how an economy should function. Why doesn't the government authorize the FED to act as it probably wishes it could? Because the power of the purse is the main purpose of Congress, and heaven forbid the House of Representatives take away its own ability to manipulate the market for more money.

I hope our new president-elect made all A's in his economic courses and that his favorite color is green.