Restore the free market.

The idea of someone getting re-elected for 40 some years is so abhorrent to me. “Thanks for your service now go get a real job.”

In previous years, the consensus has been that we need a change in congress, as long as it’s not my Congressman that is changed. Similar to the “not in my backyard” theory of building Nuclear power plants or oil refineries.

When you vote in November, vote for the challenger regardless of party. If there is no incumbent, vote conservative. Then the new Congress can be persuaded to change the system, by implementing term limits and doing away with the two party system that has taken us to the disaster we are facing now.

That’s the only way things will change.

As mortgage guarantors (including Freddie Mac), that doesn’t bode well. They were able to leverage their fat footprint out to such skinny branchs because in spite of disclaimers on page one of everything they did that the government did not back them, everyone knew/knows that the government [of Chicken Little Congressmen and Senators] does back them.

(I seem to recall that Bear Stearns was leveraged much more prudently at 32 to 1, but take this with a grain of salt, ie confirm elsewhere.)

Whatever happens, one can confidently predict a return of subtle race pandering ads — ‘if it weren’t for them, my family wouldn’t be able to buy a home’. After all, we can’t use this debacle to change anything away from the status quo.

The Treasury Secretary wants Congress to give the government more power to rein in the companies, including with a preferred stock capital injection if required. This is progress, but it’s not aggressive enough given the risks. He could make more progress more rapidly toward a safer financial system by putting the companies into federal receivership. If current law doesn’t give Treasury that power – and we hear conflicting legal claims – Mr. Paulson should seek it from Congress.

Propping up the weak and the stupid is no way to strengthen the country or the economy.

Why we should not have governmental entities messing with the banking industry:

For years, conservatives have been critical of how Fannie, and Freddie Mac, have leveraged their government-sponsored advantages (including exemptions from state and federal taxes, lower capital requirements, and the ability to borrow at rates well below those paid by private companies), to create a co-monopoly in the housing finance sector. When Fannie’s accounting scandal came to light in 2004, conservatives pushed hard for reforms to phase out Fannie and Freddie. Led by former Walter Mondale and Barack Obama campaign adviser James Johnson, Fannie and Freddie pushed back hard, raising millions of dollars for members of the relevant oversight committees and opening up “Partnership Offices” that funneled money into various housing projects in districts of key members of Congress.

Why we can’t have Obama, and Democrats in general, in charge of anything:

Fannie also bought off activist groups such as the corrupt Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which has been indicted, multiple times across the country, for vote fraud (Obama worked closely with ACORN as a street organizer in Chicago). Fannie’s lobbying efforts paid off as liberal politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.) worked to kill any real reform of Freddie and Fannie. The Washington Post reports: “In an internal memo in 2004, Fannie Mae executive Daniel H. Mudd affirmed what the company’s critics had long contended: In the political arena, ‘we always won’ and ‘we took no prisoners.’”