The Financial Mess and The Cult of Victimization

George Orwell's vision in "1984" is upon us. I know you've heard it said before. Every time some new government outrage against our liberties is pooh-poohed by the liberal press as the hysterical rantings of the far right, conservative pundits proclaim the end of society as we know it. The problem, like the boy who cried 'wolf', is that it masks the real threats we face from the government and our fellow sheep...er, citizens in trying to keep America America and not Amerika.

The current economic mess is a perfect example. It is a culumnation of too much political interference in the financial and free captilalistic markets, not the greed of such men as Bernie Madoff. Madoff pleaded guilty to massive investment fraud and was immediately whisked off to the pokey. Not to minimize his crimes, which were heinous, but Madoff was bush league compared to the ripoffs our own government perpetrates upon us every single day. It continues as I write this. His theft was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If you count from one to one million it will take you about twelve hours, maybe a day if you stutter. If you count to a billion from one it will take you thirty-two years! How's that for perspective? The government is now talking trillions of dollars in deficit spending. I don't even know of an analogy for a trillion dollars and if I did, it still would be an incomprehensible amount.

In its headlong attempt at creating wealth out of promises and pie-in-the-sky, the government, along with organizations like the NAACP, mandated that lending institutions ingore the sound practices upon which the financial world was based, and make home loans available to people who would not qualify under the normal aspects of credit worthiness. In plain english, the government forced the banking industry to give mortgages to people who were not likely to be able to repay them. This was called the "Community Reinvestment Act" and by now it is clear that this one act was the beginning of the end of our financial stability as a nation. Add in the creation of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and you have the triumverate of socialist meddling in the free market so blatant that it defies logic that we allowed it to happen. So it can be argued that, under the name of 'diversity' and 'social consciousness,' the government knocked over the first domino which since has cascaded into the meltdown we are dealing with today.

Not content with its role in perpetrating the destruction of capital markets worldwide, the NAACP (the National Association of Crazy People) has now filed suit against HSBC Corporation and Wells-Fargo Bank, among others, for being racist. Why are they racist? Well, they are racist beacuse, the NAACP says, that these financial insitutions were "supposedly steering black borrowers unfairly into costly subprime loans." (Los Angles Times Story). Huh?

NAACP: "We want more loans to low income black people!"

Banks: "But they don't qualify for the laons!"

Government: "You'll do it, or else!"

Banks: "Okay."

MELTDOWN!!!!!

Banks: "We've lost all our capital!"

Goverment: "You stupid, greedy bastards! Now we have to bail you out!"

NAACP: "You stupid, greedy, racist bastards! How dare you give mortgages to people who obviously can't repay them?"

The fact that this same organization had, for years, said that these same institutions were racist because many black and minority people could not meet the criteria for loans under the sound financial principles (upon which the country and the world based their economies) is now claiming that their constituents are being unfairly targeted by being given a chance to actually get these mortgages. It turns out that the financial institutions were right to keep credit and lending practices resonably tight, because exactly what they feared would happen did. Now it is unfair.

It's offical, folks, the inmates are now in charge of the asylum. When will the American people rise up and say ENOUGH!!? I don't know, but I'm guessing that, like all good sheep, they'll keep on grazing away, oblivious to the cowboys wearing hip-boots sneaking up behind them.