Government takeover of BP – Shoe on the other foot

Jeff — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:56:30 +0000

In this article by Robert Reich, he calls for government takeover of BP. This is a very dangerous and slippery slope. Our government keeps taking over businesses (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM) and are imposing their dictatorship over entire sectors (banking, health care, etc). Ignoring the fact that all of this: kills jobs, is unconstitutional, and socialist at best (communist at worst), let’s take a look at another angle. What happens if an extreme Republican administration takes control of our government. Will unions be too big to fail and be taken over and/or nationalized? Just imagine the reaction of the “left” if the “right” has the powers that their accumulating now. What if the shoe is on the other foot? Regardless of what side of the political line you’re on, consider what would happen if the opposing party has these powers.

Personally, I don’t want our government to have any of these powers. They should be an enabler not a provider and certainly not a dictator. This much power is dangerous.

Should the Government Take Over BP? (politicalwire.com)
After the Oil Spill, Is BP Takeover Bait? (dailyfinance.com)
Robert Reich: Why Obama Should Put BP Under Temporary Receivership (americablog.com)

Real Financial Reform

Jeff — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:14:09 +0000

House and Senate representatives, please stop the nonsense already and address the real reasons for our financial dilemma. Instead of building a $30/billion dollar “bailout fund” (that’s what it really is) and looking for ways to control businesses that are too big to fail, why not consider:

Letting them fail. If we let Goldman Sachs, AIG, etc. fail, we wouldn’t need to be worrying about regulating them now. They wouldn’t be pulling in huge bonuses, once again, we wouldn’t need a $30/billion bailout insurance fund for them.
Stop taking over private businesses. If GM were allowed to fail, they wouldn’t have needed new government loans to pay off their original government loans just to have a commercial making look like they’ve really changed anything. If GM failed, FORD (who just recorded a huge profit), might be doing even better.
Fix the SEC. Maybe instead of watching porn on the Internet, maybe they could have been checking to see if Madoff was actually making any trades, and perhaps they could have seen that these “too big to fail firms” had no idea of what garbage they were buying and selling
Hold Barney Frank and his committee accountable. Haul him in to a hearing and ask him why he kept pushing for mortgages people couldn’t afford and had no idea that the bubble would burst.
Hold Chris Doddand his banking committee accountable. Haul him in to a hearing and ask him what the heck his Banking committee was doing while all this was going on (besides getting campaign donations and sweetheart financing deals for themselves).
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac really dropped the ball. They used the taxpayers money to guarantee all these bad mortgages.

These are the real root causes of our financial problems. Creating new government agencies is not going to solve the problem. Fixing or eliminating the current ones could.

Skirmishing Continues Over Financial Reform Bill (nytimes.com)
Demonizing Goldman Sachs (powerlineblog.com)
Legislating ‘too-big-to-fail’ (money.cnn.com)

Jeffrey Schott » Fannie Mae

Government takeover of BP – Shoe on the other foot

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Real Financial Reform

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