Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 6:36:31 PM
A financial system overhaul? Life is sounding more and more like Left Behind every day. Just for the record - I do expect that Jesus Christ will return and life as we know it will end, but whether that's happening soon after an any-day-now Rapture with the world going to hell under a powerful antichrist world leader, or whether that is happening thousands of years from now under different circumstances - I'm not convinced either way. (What I am sure of is that we're never guaranteed another day - follow Christ and be prepared to die today or to live to a ripe old age.) But when I read today's headlines, it is like I'm reading bad rewrite of The Late, Great Planet Earth. Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn And Martin Crutsinger bring us the story on Obama's plans to "help" the market.
The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve to oversee the entire financial system and would also create a new consumer protection agency to guard against credit and other abuses that played a big role in the current crisis.
Great – just what we need. We need more power to be centralized at the federal level.
So the feds are going to fight "credit abuses" and mortgage problems. What does that mean? Making sure that people aren't given credit or mortgages that they can’t afford? Okay, good.
But then what will happen? Fewer "poor" people, and thereby a "disproportionate" percentage of minorities, will be getting lines of credit or mortgages. Obama and others who think his way will see that as a problem.
So what will that mean? It will mean Obama will be "forced" to help out those people being denied their "dreams".
That will mean the rest of us, through our taxes, will have to be on the hook to provide those people lines of credit and mortgages, and when they default, we're going to have to eat the costs. Write it down. This is how it will work out. How is that different than what is going on now? Well, it won't be a "voluntary" reaction by Congress and companies any more. It will be a matter of policy, course, and law.
Lawrence Summers, head of the president's National Economic Council, said that those who believed this power should not reside with the Fed had the responsibility to make the case for some other agency.
Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong! It is up to you to show where the Constitution permits this, and why it is necessary. You aren't allowed by the Constitution to just make up new government agencies to do new things.
The creation of the new consumer agency is aimed at guarding against the kinds of lending abuses which resulted in many Americans being saddled with far more mortgage debt than they could handle.
It is up to the customer to find out what they are buying. As long as the lender didn't lie to the borrower, the government should stay out of it.