A Little Reminder

Just going over some of my older writings and came across something at Pajamas Media:

Obama’s efforts at solving the financial crisis are less than successful because you can’t use government to solve a problem created by government. The president would like us to forget this fact because to admit it would mean he would have to confess that government was the problem. That is something a big government Democrat will never do.

Such an admission would also force the Democrats into the uncomfortable position of admitting there was a logical business reason for some folks not getting home loans — a reason that had nothing to do with the rich, racism, or any of the other Democratic Party codewords.  Since those same people who got loans they couldn’t afford are among the Democratic Party’s core group of voters, that’s not going to happen.

Clearly, it is in the political interests of the Democrats to make us forget it was government, and not the bankers or anyone else, who created this problem. This effort would doubtless be aided by the perception on the part of the voters that Obama’s not the problem but the solution, which was part of the president’s message in that “pitchfork” line.

It sure doesn’t help that we have so few true fiscal conservatives and free-market thinkers in government right now. If we had more of them (and people of courage to boot), we could see honest discussions of the problems and the solutions. We’d actually see people in government propose the unusual idea that government is the problem and thus can’t be the solution. Then again, given the Democrats’ hold on all three branches of government, one can hardly expect such miracles to occur within those marble halls.

But imagine what would have happened  if one or more of the bankers in that meeting with Mr. Obama had had the courage to stand up and remind him of of the facts:

“No, Mr. President. The only thing between the Democrats and the pitchforks is us, the bankers, and that’s the way it always has been.  You Democrats used us to buy votes with home loans, requiring us to lend money to people who could not pay it back. You left us holding the bag, Mr. President — you and the rest of the Democrats then in Congress. And you need our cooperation to save your political hide from the people with the pitchforks.”

One can only conclude we’d all be in better shape (both from a financial standpoint as well as from the standpoint of freedom) if the bankers showed that kind of  mettle. Trouble is, I fear, such courage is not in them.

As NAZI Germany taught us it’s always by far easier to go along with the wind that’s blowing from houses of government. So it was with the bankers and financial types on Wall Street, following the most recent presidential election.

Now it’s down to repairing the damage.

As I said back then, it’s impossible to use government to solve a problem created by the government.  That’s precisely what Obama has been trying to do.  And by now, I suspect that the message is quite clearly received that Obama is unable to solve the problems he and his fellow leftist Democrats created.