Today in a New York Times Article reviewing President Obama’s press conference, held Wednesday April 30th 2009, he is quoted to have said:
“We cannot go back to an economy that is built on a pile of sand — on inflated home prices and maxed-out credit cards, on over leveraged banks and outdated regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the prosperity of us all,”
Reading these words all I can say is YES. Yet, I remain troubled. We’ve all read about the various programs our government is implementing to “fix” our economy. Too often these programs are simply a mechanism to take money from Honest Tax Payers and distribute it to those that over-leveraged themselves and where reckless. President Obama that is not what those word would suggest your policy is.
We seem to think that whatever we do the Government will bail us out.
- Build on the Mississippi flood plane and when the river does what it has always done help those who built where the water has always been supreme.
- Live on the cliffs in California. When the rain comes, and it will, the land will be washed out from under the foundation. Washington will come to the rescue.
- Build on a fault line and when the earth shakes don’t worry too much papa will rescue you.
- Run up your credit card debt, buy a home you can”t afford and daddy will punish the lender and protect the reckless.
- Leverage yourself as Bear Stearns did and we will make it all better
- …
Nature is and has been since God set the universe in motion. Moses in his dialogue with God learned of the beginning and in Genesis he recorded those first days of Adam’s life and how easy it would have been to follow the rules.
The LORD God put the man in the Garden of Eden. He put him there to work its ground and to take care of it.
The LORD God gave the man a command. He said, “You can eat the fruit of any tree that is in the garden. But you must not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do, you can be sure that you will die.”
He gave us the chance to live in paradise for eternity. He gave us plenty. All he asked is that we work the ground, take care of it and not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of …
I do not mean to look at original sin nor do I want to talk about how the serpent beguiled woman and man simply ate with her.
What I am concerned with is that Obama is saying all the right things. Yet, when we look to the results we see money flowing into the pockets of those that took us into the abysm. We tell credit card companies that they should reduce interest charges and not protect themselves. We simply seem to be protecting those that are reckless.
So President Obama, please do as you say,
- Don’t bail out the banks and investment company, then let them skirt the rules.
- Don’t fix it so people with maxed out Credit Cards can get themselves back in trouble.
- Don’t help people and mortgage lenders who agreed to mortgages that could not be sustained by the home-owner.
This idea that some companies are just to big to let fail sounds smart. Yet, unless they are also made to appreciate their failings we will simply see it happen all over again.
They personally must feel the pain not simply do as Merrill, AIG and all the CEOs want to and do do, get a government hand out and still get the big bonus. They need to be held accountable and made to put their money where their mistakes are.