Dark Star

American Thinker:

So, now we face some serious financial problems and our only plan is to call them crises so we can invoke the "wonderful" problem-solving capabilities of the Federal government. To get a perspective on how this "crisis" could end, we only need to go back two decades to the Savings & Loan debacle. For years prior to 1986, our elected representatives to the Federal government used tax incentives to buy votes and encourage investment in real estate held for rental purposes. The tax breaks resulted in artificially inflated prices on all investment real estate. Then, in 1986 these tax incentives were eliminated after first being reclassified as tax loopholes for the "evil" rich. In the absence of the incentives/loopholes, the artificial part of prices on all investment real estate disappeared immediately. That is, the value of this type of collateral being held by the S&Ls dropped by 25%-30% instantly upon passage of the 1986 tax law.

That was the coup de grâce for the S&Ls. They had been buffeted by so many government regulations for so many years that many of them were already struggling to stay solvent. When the real estate investors walked from their devalued investments after 1986 and returned the devalued collateral to the lenders, almost everyone lost. The taxpayers and anyone interested in freedom took a hit, the "evil, greedy" owners of the S&Ls got blamed and punished, but the Senators and Congressmen who "solved" the problems they caused got re-elected--with raises.

Today, we have some more financial problems. Once again, the Marxists among us will maintain that these problems are just one more proof that capitalism does not work and that we need more government regulation. Millions of Americans have already agreed with Senator Obama or Senator McCain when they stated their versions of the American fascist slogan, "There ought to be a law..." The fallacy is that we do not have capitalism, and today's problems prove once again that socialism and fascism do not work. Almost all of our schools are socialist (businesses owned by the government), and our "privately owned" businesses suffer from so many regulations that the ownership is only nominal and the over-regulation amounts to fascism.