A Singer, A Song

I’m no financial wizard. I don’t have a stock porfolio or large sums of cash hiding in an offshore account. But even a financial dummy like me can see that the recent Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bailout signals that there’s something seriously wrong with our economy. This bailout follows quick on the heels of the IndyMac bank failure earlier this month — the third largest bank failure in U.S. history. And what’s worse is that these events are not isolated. IndyMac’s failure, the fifth one this year, followed the collossal collapse of Bear Stearns in March. By comparison, there were three such bank failures in 2007. How many in 2006? None. And in 2005? None.

Guess how many banks are expected to fail in the short term? “It’s our view that regulators are expecting 100 to 200 banks to fail” (U.S. News, July 15). Looks like Wachovia may be next. From today on CNBC: “Wachovia Posts $8.6 Billion Loss, Slashes Dividend.”

So what’s congress doing? They’re running up a criminally enormous deficit, and they’re cracking down on citizens’ privacy. (Way to go, congress!) Their answer seems to be for the state to own it all while the little guy is scrutinized and squeezed for every penny possible (as if we were the ones who caused this problem!).

View this 7-8 minute video by Congressman Ron Paul on the Housing Bill passed today. It’s very, very sobering.