Monday, September 29, 2008

Stop pointing fingers.

First, everybody blamed everybody else for the credit "crisis" brought on by subprime mortgages collapsing the industry. It's not the left's fault or the right's fault--it's both their faults. Then, everybody started blaming everybody else for the dollar falling and the market crashing. Once again, placing blame isn't the way to go: it's not the fault of either party, but the fault of both. Now, they're blaming one another over the vote going wrong on the $700 billion bailout, which most of the country isn't even sure is necessary, or should necessarily be that big. It's still not the fault of one side or the other--the vote was too close for that--but rather, the blame lies with both parties.

Or maybe it lies with the voters, who contacted their representatives and said "Don't do it, or you're fired."

In any case, I do not think the bailout was the correct action. The banks are buying each other up in bids to become "too big to fail." I think, with Washington Mutual's failure, we're seeing that that just isn't possible, that megabanks fail, too.

What ought to be done is exactly the opposite: the banks should downsize. Smaller banks take fewer accounts down with them when, not if, they fail. And with the FDIC beginning to go broke from the insured deposits at smaller banks, heaven help us when the big boys start to fail.

Honestly, the government shouldn't be trying to bail out mortgages, the stock market, auto makers, or anything else like that--if anything, they need to be pumping that money into the FDIC. The market will, after all, self correct, as long as individual bank accounts don't disappear, taking the middle class with them again.

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