#829 Crash or Credit

I’m a capitalist. But I’m also an observer of humanity.
So I’m not for complete deregulation of everything in the market. Why? Capitalism is like a high-speed car. It can change its speed two ways. It can judiciously use brakes. Or it can crash into a wall.
Sometimes people are too exuberantly greedy for their own good. Those same exuberantly greedy folks tell people like me that no one is smart enough to regulate them. They maintain that government’s best place is out of business and that an invisible hands-off policy will naturally lead to the most profits and the healthiest market.
That is, they feel that way until things come crashing down.
Back in the first Bush administration, we had this big deal where the nation’s savings and loans were imploding because of unregulated and greedy lending practices.
Now arguably, Bush Senior had nothing to do with the debacle, even though one of his sons had his monkey hands stuck pretty deep in the cookie jar.
At that point, the “keep government out of business” shouters shouted to the government to help out. Essentially saying, we’ve gobbled so much we’re now choking on it, so please, big government, come in and Heimlich us.
The famous overtaxed taxpayer bore the burden. The same taxpayer the same greedy folks are always saying is taxed too much.
Gee. Why?
Now the housing industry lobbying organizations, who are always first to the battle lines when it comes to complaining about government interference, have managed to get that same government to help bail them out of the credit/housing crisis. A crisis brought on by, you guessed it, lack of regulation of the lending industry.
What is it about Bushes and bailouts? They wave the banner of deregulation and government non-interference and then interfere in the market with big government taxpayer’s bucks.
Somehow I think pre-interference would be cheaper than post-interference.
After the last great depression, the government got involved in the stock market and the Securities Exchange Commission was born. We used to have depressions with depressing regularity. Every 20 years or so. We haven’t had one in the last 70.
In other words, those government-installed SEC brakes have kept our stock car from crashing.
America, ya gotta love it.