Your One Stop Shop!

I recently had an interesting conversation with my dad about the tanking economy and the government's recent rash of bailouts to corporations. We noted that economic growth, which is largely driven by home building and home sales, would never speed up if the government continues to subsidize and incentivize new home construction. There is no bottom to a market that is continually propped up by tax payer monies.

However, an even bigger thought occurred to me at the time.

The government has a proper role in relation to the marketplace. One part of that proper role is the provision of legal protection to those business entities whose days are numbered and who wish to enter into a state of bankruptcy, where they might portion out their dues without threat of legal action. This is an admirable function of government. It is just another branch of the defend and protect part of government.

Now consider the actions of those who approve governmental funds being applied to help companies to regain their footing. Now we are in much less savory territory. A government check always has strings attached, just like most private money. However, these strings are much more difficult to justify or define properly, because the money being used is money taken by taxation from people who the government is supposed to protect and serve. A conflict of interest immediately emerges because of the need to define who "deserves" government money.

When these two things are combined (i.e. bailouts and bankruptcy protection), a perfect storm of corruption immediately emerges. Now the government not only decides which companies should receive a check of tax payer money, but also how a company filing for legal protection of bankruptcy should be approached. GM is a prime example of this. The unions walked away with a killing while GM's secured creditors suffered. Solyndra is another great example, a failing energy company that raked in half a billion in government handouts.

We are well on our way down a slippery slope when we allow our government to not only pick the economic winners, but then also to manage their decline when they become no longer viable. The only reason for the existence of this sort of arrangement is corruption and power-hunger.

Student Loans, Student Loans...

Washington Post Article about the relation between Occupy Wall Street and student loans here. Very intriguing.

And the Violence Begins...

As I said in my earlier article about the Occupy Wall Street protest, they were only a few steps away from becoming a violent mob. Ambiguity of purpose has led to a global movement that is only too easy to coopt for one's own agenda.

And We are Here to Protest What We are Here to Protest!

I recently saw a sign from the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" campaign that got my attention and provoked a bit of a laugh. I don't recall the precise wording, but the gist was very clearly this: "Wall Street is responsible for all poverty in the world."

I had to chuckle ironically as I read it, and also had to chuckle with a steadily lessening enthusiasm as I read more and more of the material coming from the Occupy Wall Street movement. There were dozens and hundreds more signs, facebook comments and Tweets with similar slogans, their spelling ranging from fair to incompetent, and with growing dubiousness as to the truth of their content. The first sign mentioned here was clearly an unresearched statement at best, as there are many other demonstrable causes of poverty in the world such as war, confiscatory governments as in the case of China and the former Soviet Union, and other causes having nothing to do with Wall Street. However, not only was some of the other content on this issue even more assinine in its name-calling and wild accusations, it also demonstrated a disturbing muddle of reasons for why these people were even protesting in the first place.