The First Post notes:
One of the more admirable aspects of the Paulson bail-out is the elimination of lobbying by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Over the past decade, the two firms spent over £100m paying Washington lobbyists to stave off closer government scrutiny of their activities. The politicians who succumbed to this lobbying, Democrats and Republicans alike, escape scot-free.
It is a shame the government does not go further and actively seek to recoup that money on behalf of the taxpayers now footing the bill for the firms' excesses.
Let's be clear: this lobbying was part of the neo-liberal agenda of the capture of the state for the benefit of a tiny minority, with intent that their activity remain hidden from view.
This was the Reagan / Thatcher agenda.
This is the fault of the Republican / Conservative parties. It is they, with their policies of economic liberalisation and light regulation (promoted by the Tories in the UK until a year ago) who should be carrying the can.
But as Larry Elliot says in the Guardian this morning, they aren't because :
neither Barack Obama nor Gordon Brown seem willing to seize the social democratic moment. That's dumb politics. It means that what should be a crisis for the right has become a crisis for the left.
I agree.
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Richard,
The lobbying of congress by FNMA/FHLMC was disgusting and something that was repeatedly criticised by those on all sides of the political divide.
Obviously, few *politicians* (the beneficiaries of the largess) complained about it but that’s hardly surprising.
Indeed, the whole point is that if you delegate monstrously huge powers to an entity (be it the US Federal Government or any other institution), it would be amazing if institutions that depended on favourable decisions from that entity for their survival *didn’t* throw huge resources at it.
Surely this is an argument *against* a massively centralised state and *for* a distributed market-based economy?
Richard
Let be honest, no reasonable person could possibly come to that conclusion
How about a law against lobbying ninstead? Mightn’t that be easier?
Richard
If only the masses understood the causes behind the current economic climate. The Tories have changed their tune hugely since the last election – from claiming the economy is in it’s current state thanks to their diligence, to blaming the labour party as soon as it goes pair shaped.
The Tories are wedded to neo-liberalism
They remain part of the problem. They cannot provide the solution
But nor can New Labour
What people don’t seem to be mentioning in the U.S. (perhaps because it is not politically correct) is that the whole reason that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae came about was for “poor” people–people who could not normally get loans for houses because, frankly, they couldn’t afford them. The Black Caucus was considered “friends & family”–check out speeches on YouTube given by FM to Black Caucus gatherings (with Obama in attendance, of course).
Poor people need to learn how NOT to be poor–not to be coddled into a bad financial deal that will ruin their credit forever….. until there is another government-backed socialism program.
As usual, the lib agenda is to redistribute wealth, so the poor vote for them as hero, but all-the-while keeping the poor down by giving them a hand-out instead of a hand up.
Welfare is the second slavery in America–slavery of the poor, no matter what color. Instead of the war on drugs, we need another addiction–to a regular paycheck and self-determination.
As long as libs believe it’s government’s job to create jobs instead of the private sector’s, or believes government has to assure the success of businesses instead of letting the best, most innovative companies win, we are doomed to become weaker and weaker.
By getting the government (“we, the people”–taxpayers) to back these risky loans, the poor buy houses they can’t afford, and “we, the people” are forced by libs to “cover it.” The poor end up losing the houses, but libs (who pretend to be for the poor) continue to prosper, either by working at these institutions or through lobbyists’ dollars.
The conservatives can’t block these programs or add any protection hoops, or they are branded mean-spirited and without compassion.
This whole bail-out is basically a request from the Treasury Dept that we, the taxpayers, deliver $700 Billion in unmarked bills to their doorstep. Only the House Republicans are standing for the taxpayers, but they’ll probably be forced to cave by the Democrats, as soon as the Democrats find the right verbiage to characterize their hold-out as irresponsible.
Our Founders’ plan for the federal government was to keep us secure from outside enemies and to regulate interstate commerce. Period. Libs have a different plan and it has taken us from taxes that were 5% of our income in the early 50s to the current array of taxes that consume 35%+ of our income–they believe they know how better to spend the money. Just like our population, we’ve gone from physically fit/fiscally fit to obese/porked out.
Look at Dawn’s web site
She’s clearly well qualified to comment
And frankly, what she says is to my mind representative of the callous indifference of those who plead they are Christian and have never once opened their mind to what that might mean
No wonder most people in the UK won’t go near a church. You can’t speak compassion and deliver the hate in her words. It just doesn’t work.