Projects Possible

I’m sure that all of you have an opinion about the current economic condition.  Many of you may be caught up in the economic turmoil that we read about and hear on the news… mortgage foreclosures, retirees having to go back to work because their 401Ks have about 1/2 the value they had prior to the crisis, job layoffs, etc…

The questions that we ultimately have is what if anything can be done and how can all of this be fixed?  I must say that I am probably on the side that a government induced attempt at a solution is probably NOT the way to go.  Wasn’t it government and pseudo government (think Fannie May, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve) entities that created the problem in the first place?  Government policies that caused unusual lending practices carried out by the pseudo government entities? 

And where are we now when all of the dominoes start to fall?  We’ve created nearly a Trillion dollars worth of debt for a bailout of Wall Street and public banking. [NPR said that a Trillion dollars is enough money to “buy about 1000 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies for every person in the United States…(about 303 million of us)”.  They go on to say that “a trillion barrels of oil would – at current consumption levels – fuel the world for about 33 years”.   Suffice it to say that it is A LOT and it has to come from somewhere. I can only think of three places… we either de-value our dollar and just print more (our Federal Reserve is good at this), we borrow it from other countries, or we increase taxes.  Since taxes are never a popular thing we ultimately end up placing the value of our country at risk.

To further complicate this matter we are allowing the government to pick and choose who to help… AIG, Citibank, GM, Chrysler, Ford… huge entities that have mismanaged their businesses.  If I were a business owner and chose to make risky decisions or were simply inept in my ability to manage a company I don’t think good ‘ol Uncle Sam is going to be writing me a check to save my business and to keep all of my employees working.  

The whole thing seems to reek of socialism to me (choose your own definition).  We’ve already taken some major steps… our government now owns portions of banks and insurance companies.  The concept of redistributing the wealth of this country is not a pleasant one to me. And as we saw from the whole AIG executive retreat after the first round of government funding they just don’t seem to care where the money comes from they still spend it with wild abandon.  I predict the same will be true of any entity that we give money to.

Stop the insanity… stop the “entitlement” attitude that seems to be so prevalent in this country.  Let’s get back to hard work and innovation and become the great country that we are.  Throwing money at a problem is never a long lasting solution.