The Right Thing, For Once

Congress did something today that is almost unprecedented in the 21st century. It did the right thing. The House of Representatives voted against the plan to bailout Wall Street. This plan, like so many others the Bush administration has hatched, is a device that would reward the incompetence of an elite few while at the same time harming innumerable Americans guilty of nothing but paying their taxes.

It's refreshing to see Congressmen, particularly Republicans, standing up to a Republican president who has turned his back on conservative ideals, in this case, the Free Market concept.

This bailout is unnecessary. Without a doubt, there will, if no bailout passes Congress, be more takeovers of failing financial companies by financial companies that are sound. That is not a bad thing. People may lose home to foreclosure; most likely these will be people who could not afford to buy these homes in the first place. These foreclosures would not be a bad thing. Housing prices may fall. Again, not a bad thing, since the prices were artificially raised to begin with by lenders selling mortgages that were simply bad business. There may be a recession (certainly, though, not another Great Depression, as some fear mongers would have you believe) and this too may not be a bad thing. If there is going to be a Free Market, there are going to be ups and downs. To have nothing but a continually rosy economic picture is to have a fake economic picture. Had this bailout passed, it would have socialized the financial sector in ways Franklin Delano Roosevelt could only have dreamed of. It would create a fake economy, something along the lines of the way the Chinese prop up their economy by simply printing more money whenever they feel like it.

Let's hope the Free Market believers in both the House and the Senate continue to stand up for what is right, not for what George Bush and Henry Paulson want. Let's hope this bailout is dead forever.