Henry Paulson Regrets to Inform You....

Henry Paulson "regrets" the errors that have led to the current financial crisis. Don't get too excited, kids. Here are his words. "We're not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people, different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market discipline that got us here." Wow. Don't you just love the royal "we"? "We're not proud...." Gosh, Henry, sounds like your royal self is displeased with a whole lot of us underlings. Not to worry, though, because King Henry is here to save the day, fresh with a few hundred billion dollars of cash provided by most of us underlings, otherwise known as taxpayers.

Henry and his associates will "mitigate the impact on the real economy and we'll get this financial system working again." Oh, goody. He's going to fix everything. And if you read his statement again, you'll notice that Paulson doesn't really blame himself for anything that has transpired, so you can count on him knowing how to fix everything. After all, the mistakes were made by "many different people, different parties" because of "failures of our regulatory system" and "failures of market discipline".

Let's take this step-by-step, shall we?. " Mistakes were made by many different people, different parties". Yes, they were. Those of you who want to lay the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco at the feet of Bill Clinton? Not a problem. I'll go along with you there. After all, he did sign into law legislation greatly expanding the reach of those two institutions within the national mortgage system. But, let's not forget that there were a bunch of footprints at the crime scene. The legislation that President Clinton signed was passed by a Republican controlled Senate and a Republican controlled House of Representatives. Remember? The same guys who spent a lot of time and taxpayer dollars impeaching the President passed the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac legislation that the President signed.

And if President Bush and the Republican party had such a problem with the legislation, they had six years of control of the White House, the House, and the Senate to write new legislation. President Bush had seven years to revoke Bill Clinton's Executive Orders or to issue new Executive Orders to rein in the miscreants. Did they? Did he? No. You know what they did do? They kept telling us how their tax policies were delivering a strong economy. President Bush and the Republican leadership were constantly trumpeting the record levels of home ownership in America under their stewardship. You know how those record levels came about? Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, low interest rates, a lot of financial shenanigans, and a lot of official wink, wink, nod, nod politics and pretend regulatory action.

Oh, trust me. The Democrats aren't off the hook here. I am absolutely disgusted with both parties. And I am absolutely disgusted with the vocal, partisan supporters of both parties. You people and your lapdog politicians are why we are in this mess. The GOP is supposed to be the party of small government. Hah. How can any of you people on the right hand side of the aisle say that with a straight face? Homeland Security, Patriot Act, War On Drugs, RICO statutes, the largest increases in the federal government in history under Republican watches. Whatever happened to the idea that government was best kept out of people's lives. And you folks on the left hand side of the aisle can quit clapping your hands in glee. You joined in the creation of these monstrosities in an effort to portray yourselves as just as patriotic as the next guy.

Now you're all falling all over yourselves to pass legislation to keep the economy afloat. Guess what? You guys are all the reason that things look so bad now. And you guys are all the reason things will get even worse a few years down the road. You just won't let the market work. The Democrats, I understand. In their minds government regulation is good, free markets are bad. You Republicans, however, are supposed to know better. So, what are you doing now, when the country needs you to let the markets instill a little market discipline in their own painful and memorable ways? You're rolling out the government steamroller. Government ownership of banks. Propping up asset prices. Buying up the piss-poor financial mistakes of a lot of greedy, too-smart-for-our-own-good people. Not letting the market work out the excesses the way markets always have.

You Republicans, and you Democrats didn't let the stock market bubble completely deflate. You propped it up with artificially low interest rates and an artificial mortgage securities market and voila! You created a real estate bubble. You wouldn't let the real estate bubble properly deflate, so now we've got an irrational asset market. You're going to prop up that market to prevent people from feeling all of the pain and you're going to do it for one reason......and that reason ain't the old "for the good of the country" standby trotted out everytime you putzes trot out some more big government nonsense. You're doing it to get re-elected. Well, if you are a small-government Republican who is going along with the plan, then you can just throw your philosophy out the door. Wear all the flag pins you want to wear. You're not more patriotic than the Democrats. You're just as fake as you say they are. And you're more interested in retaining power and keeping things the way they've been for the last seventy years.

It really is time for a change. And that change means kicking every damn one of the bums out of office. Federal elected service should not be a full-time job with lifetime benefits. It's time for the politicians and their remoras to get real jobs and to stop sucking the lifeblood out of this country.