All over the news lately we have heard about the crisis in the financial market and the need for government to act. There has been a massive amount of fear generated about the possibility of a global depression should some of these massive financial institutions fail. Fortunately, our government is on the job. Recently, there was an $85 billion, billion, bailout of AIG by the Fed. Now we’re looking at a firehouse passing of a $700 billion bailout of a number of these institutions that made poor business decisions. Of course, the media is casting a dire but rosy picture of this whole situation, and the line is that “we don’t want to do it, but we have to”. That’s all well and good, but there’s a few things that I think we are missing out of this picture.
First off, let’s take a look at this $85 billion bailout of AIG. The key here is that we spent $85 billion dollars of “taxpayer money” that… and here’s the kicker… nobody voted on. Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke and his group basically signed this money over. And who oversees the Fed? Where are the checks and balances for them? There are none. In fact, we don’t even vote on the person who is arguably the most powerful economic figure in the United States, if not the world. Each of the candidates made their point about whether bailing out AIG was the right thing to do, but in reality, even the real president didn’t have an official say in it. Even if Bush wanted to bail out AIG, he’d still have to push a bill through congress to do it. So where is the accountability for Ben Bernanke? Continue reading The Path to Socialism
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