Sorry we can’t agree with you. We here at the Hypo support free coinage of silver and bi-metallism. We will not allow you to crucify us upon your cross of gold.

I just read an article about a small business owner who is faced with the prospect of having to shut down his business because he can’t get more lines of credit for operating expenses. While sad for him personally, this is exactly the sort of thing we need to have happening, and on a large scale.

Call it economic Darwinism, call it the free market, it’s the same thing. If you don’t have the money to run a business, the business doesn’t get run. Why should this be a bad thing? Dave Ramsey has been telling us for years to cut up our credit cards and pay down our debts. For people who live debt-free, the headlines that have everyone in panic mode are passe and boring. Perhaps the collapse of the bankrupt economy is the best thing that could happen to this country.

Get back to the gold standard. Abolish fractional reserve banking. Tell the government to get itself the hell out of the market. Utopian ranting? Probably.

I just think the current state of everything in our country is pretty pathetic. We have a tanking economy with no end in sight, a Congress who is too concerned with partisan warfare to give two craps, and an election that likely is being heavily influenced (likely to the point of deciding the outcome) by a mainstream media that doesn’t even attempt to mask its rooting interest…its all just very depressing.

There could be something better. The question is is the time exists to make that choice. While this jokers dither, we pay the price.

I think your characterization of Obama is a little disingenuous, since I don’t think that he’s expressly said “Republican’s caused this.” If you’re suggesting that his claim that an overly permissive culture of non-regulation that has pervaded Washington for the last 10 years contributed to this mess necessarily indicts Republicans, I can only ask “who has been running the shop?”
Lastly, I think we can all agree that recriminations on both sides are part of election year politics. What I’m frustrated with is the fact that these cowards are more interested in saving their jobs then they are in saving the economy.

Christopher,

Your contention that “we’re in the mess we’re in because of government manipulation of the market” is quizical. Pricipally because the Commodity Futures Trading Act of 2000 specifically exempted the credit default swaps that are behind much of this mess from government regulation.

I’ll grant you however that Alan Greenspan did not take the punch bowl away fast enough, and allowed too much liquidity into the marketplace. I don’t think this consitutes “manipulation.” The Hunt Silver Crisis was manipulation. This isn’t that.

While I think that you’re right that we have to go through a painful deleveraging, we can’t allow that to demolish the entire economy in the process. Small business need credit for purchases, law students need student loans. The absence of a properly functioning credit market means we might as well head back towards subsistence agriculture.

Our economy is far too dependent on debt and credit in the first place. It’s about time the house of cards came crashing down.

1) I don’t think the problem is as much as “people holding off on lending” as it is “even if they want to, the banks don’t have the cash to loan it to them.” When McDonald’s can’t even get a loan, I think its time the fed gov infuse some capital into the market to take the handcuffs off these banks.

2) Your hospital ER reference is a bit off. I do not think that many, if any, of the congressmen who voted against the bill on “principle” say that we should do nothing. To put it in the context of your hypo, it would be like if the guy with chest pains comes running into the ER, and opposing a segment of the hospital employees screaming that the guy needs a full heart transplant when other less drastic, less risky, and more effective means of treatment may be available. The problem is in the meatime the poor bastard’s going to have a heart attack.

3) If you want to point out a guy yelling about how he shouldn’t have eaten bacon, how about none other than the obamessiah himself? The only thing he consistently says about this whole mess is that its the republicans fault….eerily similar to when he was asked about the surge in Iraq last friday….

I don’t want to belabor this point because its not the focus of our little enterprise here, but anyone who votes against this bill on “principle” is nuts. It’s like yelling at a guy who comes into the ER with chest pains about how he shouldn’t have eaten so much bacon.

And while I think the Main Street/Wallstreet dichotomy is bull, I think that people (including a number of members of Congress) don’t get the fact that inacction does not mean that it’s going to save the taxpayer money. Time’s Justin Fox made this point earlier:

But there’s a catch: taxpayers are already on the hook for the failures of financial institutions, and it’s possible that the bill will actually be larger without bailout legislation than with it. That’s because the regulators who mind the financial industry — the Federal Reserve, Treasury and FDIC — will keep doing what they’ve been doing: stepping in to prevent the chaotic failure of banks and other large financial institutions. This means continuing to put hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at risk, but in a way that adheres to no clear plan of action and doesn’t require members of Congress to explicitly approve their actions.

And boom goes the dynamite.

I realized after posting that I read your point #1 exactly opposite of how you meant it – you said all members in competitive races voted against it and I read all members who voted against are in competitive races. Whoever said the competitive race thing is probably right, I haven’t been following the congressional races too closely this year.

I will say that having worked on the Hill for an office during the Member’s first re-elect in what was at that time a highly competitive seat it’s hard to ignore thousands of callers who are all saying the same thing, even for a Congressman who’s not afraid to vote his or her conscience. (I was fortunate to work for a Member in that case who could vote against that sentiment and was a gifted enough communicator to help voters see why they could still trust that person to vote on conscience and still represent them well).