Bush: Federalizing the Economy?
REALonomics Editorial
President George Bush wants to overhaul the regulation and control of America’s financial markets. Under the Bush plan, the Federal Reserve (Chairman Bernanke) will become the designated controller of our economic markets and be fully responsible to regulate their stability.
In addition, Bush wants the central bank to poke its regulatory nose inside the tent of every part of the financial services industry in the United States. All financial services, not just commercial services, will be under the scrutiny and powers of the central bank.
The Crowning of Mr. Bernanke
Under the Bush scenario, Bernanke will be coronated as the royal controller of all currency, money management, commerial banks and every type of financial institution in the United States. The Fed, under Bernanke, will become the market stability regulator, something like a throttle control on an engine, empowering it to tinker with every aspect of lending in the country.
Included in the plan is a knee-jerk reaction to the sub-prime lending debacle that designates another bureucratic office to oversee consumer lending issues to insure standardized compliance.
This plan evokes a number of questions the real estate industry must ask itself. Are we federalizing the economy, such as many second and third world countries have done? Is this the socialization of lending in the United States? MORE IMPORTANTLY, what does this action, if implemented mean to the real estate, mortgage and title industrys? Will such action actually benefit the economy and the consumer or, will it serve to further stagnate growth, delay recovery, stiffle free market innovation and release us all from entreprenuerial solutions?
Let’s Remember not to Forget
Let’s not forget that the former Federal Reserve Chairman, endorsed and encouraged sub-prime lending before his convenient departure from office.
Let’s not forget that one of Bernanke’s financial aces has alwasy been to print more money, thus further weakening the value of the dollar in the international markets.
Let’s not forget that in the past the markets corrected and self-regulated themselves, weeding out corruption and bad practices.
Let’s not forget that history clearly demonstrates that intrusive federal tampering with the free market system inevitably leads to a weaker stock market.
Let’s not forget this is an election year and the heat has been turned up in the political kitchen forcing politicians to create solutions to the mortgage mess for the American consumer.
All of us should take a close look at what is occuring and ask ourselves if the solution Bush proposes is the right one and whether long term financial and market stability should be put into the hands of Washington.
REALonomics believes that too much federal control and regulation of the monetary supply and the financial markets is like giving it the power to regulate and ration water.
Popularity: 10% [?]
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Sure, let’s give the Fed even more control after it single handedly created the housing boom and bust with its constant meddling in the financial markets.
Consider - the Fed lowered interest rates to extremely low levels after 9/11. That made mortgage money extremely cheap. That drove up real estate values. So much so, that people began to seek out “exotic” read: adjustable mortgages in order to be able to afford their payments.
After a couple of years nearly 1/3 of all homeowners in this country had arm’s tied to short term rates. And how did the Fed react to this? By disregarding it completely and subsequently boosted those short term rates 17 times in a 2 year period - a total of 4.25%! Now, all those poor homeowners are having difficulty making their payments and they are being told that it is their mortgage broker or mortgage company that is to blame. Well here’s some news homeowners - THEY didn’t raise your interest rate… that blame lies with the Fed. Homeowners should be raising hell about how the Fed handles interest rates. And now they are about to gain even more control. God help this country.
Federalizing the Economy?
Welcome my friends to the face of new Social Fascism. Internationalism. A new era…an area of true cradle to grave government solutions for everybody. The real question should be, why do we have a centralized Private Bank of non elected, unknown people, some not even citizens of the USA, running our lives? Because that is what the Federal Reserve Bank is. It is not Federal and never has been. Most of our sheeple, never mind real estate brokers and lenders are so clueless to the true ways of the world that we are now discussing how to give these same private bankers the keys to the entire castle!
What we are seeing today is the end result of over 36 years of gambling and speculation with OPM. President Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold reserve standard on August 15, 1971, he effectively ended the Bretton Woods system of fixed currency-exchange rates. This ended any protection and insulation from speculators and their hedged banker friends from gambling currencies and entire countries. The international bankers have created a bubble, the collapse of which is now laying waste to the global banking system and securities markets.
America can be taken without firing a single shot. Most of us will willingly give up our freedom and sovereignty so that we can be taken care of by Big Brother. (the next election is really about how fast we move to socialism) The Plan here folks is the next step in creating a North American Union. NAU. These plans take a while. From 1971 to today was 36 years. But remember the USA is only a tad over 200 years old. The plan layed out by id10t Treasury Sec Paulson (international lawyers), is the foundation to unite Canada, Mexico and the United States into one big happy Family with one banking system, one currency and one big brother. Yep, FREE health care and social security and we will all live happily ever after. You say no way now…but when things get bad enough, you will beg for it. Hell, NAR will tell us how great it will be to sell homes in Canada or Mexico with our new NAU international license!
Remember, the British lost the battle but won the war with the USA. So here we are today. The Fed is pouring money into the system with unprecedented speed, the government is moving ahead with a series of bailout measures designed to transfer the losses of the banking system to the public.
In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of loans given to the banks through the Federal Home Loan Banks, the government is using the Federal Housing Administration to refinance and insure mortgages, and expanding the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in buying larger mortgages, effectively putting the taxpayers on the hook for the huge real estate losses working their way through the system. On top of that, we have the Bush stimulus plan and the apparent intervention by the Fed to keep the stock market from collapsing.
The futility of this approach was demonstrated by the fact that, despite all the interventions, the Fed was unable to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest investment bank in the nation. We have now entered what is, in effect, an open-ended bailout of the U.S. banking system, in which the hundreds of billions spent so far will soon turn into trillions.
Look at history since 1913 and then look at history since 1971. These are watershed eras. What we are seeing and living through is a new history. People such as Bush, Clinton, Obama or McCain are all backed by the same behind the scenes people. These people want you do as your told and tow the line for world wide big brother.
Cheers.