I don't understand Jarvis's statement:
"I believe in the market but I also believe that the government must decide when to regulate it just enough. (That is the essence of why I am a Democrat.)" (The moral imbalance of bailouts)
My personal understanding of a general Democrats' opinion is that there is rarely a reason not to involve the government in our lives as long as it passes the litmus test of "helping" a given segment of the population. And this is exactly what makes me not a Democrat (and these days, less and less of a Republican).
I don't believe that the government can do anything long term to help a given segment of the population. By making centralized choices over the value one group (purportedly) offers vs. another, you take away the basic freedoms and responsibilities we are afforded through our Constitution. Imbalances in markets and social systems are created that are catastrophic; much the same way the current financial turmoil is caused by this imbalance. At the end of the day, the derivative insurance market (for insuring default on loans) has led to the chain reaction burning the foundations away from large investment firms and banks. But, at the beginning of this chain reaction is the opinion of a "little known" Democrat - Andrew Cuomo, then as Pres. Clinton's HUD Secretary - who thought everyone should have access to loans to buy homes - even if they couldn't afford it in traditional terms (i.e. 20% down-payment and steady income). By setting up this perverse system whereby the most risky of mortgages/loans (i.e. those that showed a high likelihood of default) would be backed and "insured" by the government, we were creating an incentive for banks to loan money to people they shouldn't have and for people who shouldn't be provided credit be given a lot of it. So, while not the entire reason for our current dilemma, it is the typical political (both Democrat and Republican) interventionism that led to this mess - greed of the assholes who where trying to make a quick, and very big, buck from this tidy little loophole, notwithstanding. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
I had to make a commentary on Jeff's post because the rest of it is dead-on, in my opinion. He said it first and said it better than I could have:
"The problem for those left holding the bag - us - is that we have no leverage ourselves to demand conditions in return for our involuntarily generous rescue."
How generous of our Congress and President (and associated agencies) to hand out our and our kid's money to help the misdeeds of today's idiots (businessmen and politicians equally).
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