Racingmonkey

I get tired at the normal time, lay down, fall asleep, five minutes later I wake up and I am up for three hours.  Freaking cat nap.  Its miserable.

So if free market captialism is like a car, for the past five years or so we as a country have been speeding.  Other countries saw us, and they too started speeding.  The government watched us - it wasn't anything that everyone knew wasn't proper - but man, those speeding cars were sure getting places.  Even though we all knew that there should be speed limits, rules of the road, many of the faster cars felt that it had to keep driving fast - to keep up with the other fast cars - and the government didn't want to slow us down - because heck, it appears that we are sure getting where we are going and maybe, just maybe those drivers knew what they were doing - their skills were like mad race car drivers.  

And then the wreck came (probably starting with the failed Bear Stearns hedge funds),  but the cars kept going because what the hell else could they do.  And the government started watching (it met daily with Lehman Brothers)  And then while watching as all the really fast cars came tumbling into a huge pileup.  It was like a movie wreck, that just kept coming and coming - no one could tell what cars would be impacted; most of these cars, in fact, that plowed into the back of this wreck were going the speed limit!

And then the government started to clean up the wreck (slowly) while it demonized the fast cars, all fast cars, as the reason for the mess, which is only partly true.

Instead of admitting that those fast cars really took us places, and that they should have done THEIR JOB and regulate the rules of the road and enforce speed limits, the govenment told us that our cars were the problem - that really we should all just get on the government bus and let them drive.  Maybe only while they cleared up the wreck.  Maybe longer.

And no one wanted to drive any more, and the government couldn't figure out why.

The bus isn't the answer.  Help clear the wreck and put our cars back on the road, this time with rules and enforcement, but only those rules that will address the failures of the past.  Each rule that is passed will slow these cars down, but lets be reasonable.  Let them run on the flats, slow them by schools - don't just slow them.  Use some judgement here.

Oh, but the governments judgement is sure suspect - and they have done such a good job at everything so far.  The heads of the government change, you see, but the people that actually do the work NEVER change.  They are the same people in those jobs for the last twenty years.  And I am sure, with  a new boss, they will now be GREAT at their job.  Please...

So is anyone going to decry the waste, inefficiency and oppressiveness that comes from the governments involvement in our life?  And yes, our free markets screwed up, great, but with those screw ups came much prosperity, growth not just for the us, but for the entire world.  And that is freedom, the freedom to fail.  And now, to rush in with the government being the only source of the kinseyian (sp) economic spend as a saviour is just mind numbing.  When did they become so good at this saviour stuff anyway?

Its a death by a thousand bills, a thousand bureaucrats, of forms, of policies.

And once those new systems are hatched, a different set of the same powerful, rich people will have their way of controls, and a new way to memorize the constituency.  Get them hooked on our new government crack, the new entitlement.  

I can't imagine the spirit that is being sucked out of america when we have to look to our government to save our commerce and not our captains of industry.  Eisenhower was short-sighted, worrying only about the military industrial complex - soon, we'll be building DC cars, the government will own your home, and you'll do business at its bank.

Has anyone waited in line for a social security card?  Dealt with a cop?  Remember what the post office was like without Fedex and UPS competing?  Do you want the DMV line at your bank? 

The coldest subway platform in NY is the Brighton Beach platform in winter.  The wind blows off the atlantic, there is nothing to break the gale; you look out over the russian billboards and its no stretch of the imagination to think you are in russia, waiting on a st petersburg trolley.

Our poor new president, S&P down to 8000, the market tanked after his inaguration.  OMG!  What happened to the intrinsict value of our institutions mattering?  So these banks have such little faith in their management, their strategies, and their hard earned assets, that something as capricious as speech will shake their foundations?  And they stay there, straight faced, and ask for more TARP.  Ugh.  No more for those institutions.  Let them go away. Or eat cake.