Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be

Once again I find myself, as do many others I'm sure, confused by the back-and-forth between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington over the proposed re-regulation of Wall Street's financial industry.  Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) says his reforms will do X, while Sen. McConnell (R-KY) says those reforms would do Y.  Bipartisanship is once again illusory even though our economy is now just emerging (maybe) from the (supposed) near collapse of our financial markets and their subsequent bailout less than two years ago.   I use the term "maybe" for obvious reasons.  Unemployment still remains painfully high, despite some signs of recovery, but no end in sight to the monstrous appetite for spending by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.  I use the term "supposed" because I remain skeptical of the need for TARP when within months, the very firms that plead for their lives, and the very future of the world, were just as quickly reporting record profits, paying unseemly bonuses, and repaying their loans with interest, back to the government.  How do you get from there to here so quickly if the hole you dug was as deep as you said.  It just doesn't add up.  Same with GM and Chysler, but that's another story.

Then again, it's not hard to imagine that the two sides are still miles apart.  We just spent a year and a half arguing the pros and mostly cons of Obamacare.  And again, even after two years and a preponderance of evidence, there's no shared agreement on the reasons or culprits of the collapse.  Sure Wall Street firms created questionable products to sell even more questionable securities, but weren't they doing so at the behest and assistance of Washington?  Wasn't the social engineering of extending cheap credit to risky borrowers in the name of expanding home ownership behind the whole mess?  Sure it was.  And wasn't Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the originators of such trash, all the while being protected, aided and abetted by many in Congress?  Sure they were.  Remember Rep. Barney Frank and the House Democrats obstruction of Fannie and Freddie reforms in 2008?  How about the Senate Democrats, led by then Senators' Obama, Dodd, and Kerry?  Were those three in opposition to reform because they were in fact the three biggest recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie, and that one of them remains the biggest believer in the practice of social engineering?

Which reminds me, where are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the the Dodd bill?  Or the House bill for that matter.  Why are they not part of the discussion?  According to the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/22/why-fannie-mae-freddie-ma_n_508934.html) these wards of the state, paid out $40 million in executive compensation and bonuses without anyone batting an eye.   Additionally, their loans may ultimately cost U. S. taxpayers $380 billion and by most accounts will never be repaid.  So much for reform.  To paraphrase the words of economist Milton Friedman, if a service or product fails in the private sector it goes out of business, but in the public sector, a failure is usually rewarded, if not replicated.