BAILOUTS

I'm sick of bailouts. AIG and GM and Bear Stearns and Fanny/Freddy and Bank of America and...so many other companies that it boggles the mind. And after allocating trillions of dollars and giving away trillions of dollars, how is the economy looking? The Dow closed at around 6800 yesterday. And, after all of your money and my money that has gone to AIG, how are they doing? They're back at the front of the soup line asking for more money!

We need to move back in the direction of a free market system and have the government keep its mitts off the market (other than those obvious requirements of maintaining the legal system and protecting property rights.)

Write in your journal that on March 3, 2009, I predicted that unless the government stops this foolish practice of allowing no business to fail, our economy will collapse.

There are those (many!!) who feel that the 1981/82 recession was worse than what we're facing now. Unemployment was as high as 10.8%. Banks were failing. Businesses were closing. And how did we get out of that financial crisis? In the end, after some attempts to kick start the economy by pouring cash on the problem, it was ended by lowering taxes and having the government get out of the way.

I realize that there are differing ways to look at this situation and there are those who feel that the lowering of taxes and reducing government intervention didn't have that much to do with ending the recession, but the fact is, the recession came to a speedy conclusion and President Reagan was re-elected by a huge margin, attesting to the fact that the majority of Americans felt like his approach is what got us out of the financial crisis.

I continue to pray that President Obama and his financial team will figure out a way to end the current financial mess.