Doing Business In

Observing the spectacle of Senators (or Congressmen) who are equally if not more culpable in the economic crisis, grilling executives, makes one wonder if America will ever recover or become a larger Greece or Portugal- ready to tumble. While not an apologist for Goldman Sachs or in any way condoning any impropriety on the part of banks, mortgage lenders, or brokerage houses that contributed to the crash, one must remember that government with its insistence on lending to those who were not credit-worthy started the avalanche to begin the fall. When John McCain presciently warned of the coming reckoning, Democrats actively thwarted any reform that could have staved off the recession. Had it not been for the government forcing lenders to extend credit with aggressive action against supposed redlining the subprime market would either never have come into existence or only become a fraction of what it ultimately mushroomed into, and damage from subprimes could have been easily contained. The government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae further exacerbated the rapid decline with leadership at the GSEs evincing blunder and corruption by rewarding themselves lavishly for taking unrecoverable risks (with taxpayer money). So government action, not Goldman Sachs, allowed the subprime vehicles to come into being, and government regulators inaction permitted the subprime market to spiral to collapse, with Securities and Exchange personnel who should have been monitoring the situation and enforcing our laws, evidently not asleep at the switch, but in a number of cases, carefully scrutinizing pornography on government time and the taxpayers' dime. While financial institutions are not blameless and should be held to account, responsibility for the debacle must be placed at the feet of many of the sanctimonious politicians, particularly Democrats, who blocked timely reform when it could have mattered. The United States had up until Obama's Presidency been known as a nation entrepreneurs, industry, and innovators could do business in, but with Obama grabbing ever greater power, it seems many populists and demagogues in office are intent simply on doing business in.