By Dean Robinson
Summit City Noise
It was nice to learn that the House of Representatives defeated the $700 billion Wall Street Bailout Bill this past Monday. It was not nice to learn that Mark Souder (R-IN) voted for it.
Why does Souder insist that the American people pay for the hijinks of rich, corrupt, international bankers? The guilty should pay for what they have done, not the innocent. The guilty, rich bankers can afford to clean up their own mess. If companies create conditions that lead to their failure, the companies must fail. That is what's supposed to happen in a free market. It is a fundamental principle. The people — and therefore their elected representatives — should not give up on such fundamental principles when times get tough. Such trying times are exactly when citizens and their representatives should embrace fundamental truths as opposed to desperate measures.
"We don't know what to do, but we must do something quickly."
That's the common operating wisdom in Washington D.C. these days. "We don't know what to do, but we've gotta do something fast!" Each and every representative and senator admits that they have no idea of what will happen with or without a bailout plan enacted. They have no idea if the $700 billion cotton ball will fix anything — even though American citizens and renowned economists have uniformly panned a taxpayer-funded bailout. Why should the American people be forced to give $700 billion to corrupt bankers when Congress and President Bush have offered no evidence whatsoever that such a move would help solve anything?
Here's the real $700 Billion Question: Why are Souder and the Bush Administration trying to terrorize the American people into giving up $700 billion when the Federal Reserve Bank was already prepared to flood banks with $630 billion? The Federal Reserve announced before Monday's vote that it would dump $630 billion into the global financial system.
By injecting an additional $300 billion into its commercial-bank emergency loan program and $330 billion into its ongoing currency swaps with foreign central banks, the Federal Reserve Bank is already printing and shipping more bills to prop up its debt-reliant system.
The Constitution of the United States says "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..." We promote the general welfare — we don't guarantee it, as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson claims he will with the swift and thoughtless passage of the Wall Street Bailout Bill.
If we indeed have a free market, we must allow it to behave like a free market. The greedy bankers of this world made immoral decisions inspired by greed, fear, and an insatiable lust for power. The bankers willingly made this mess so they should clean it up. Why do Souder and Bush insist that hard-working, tax-paying American citizens pay for this crime and corruption? Why are Souder and Bush protecting the guilty and greedy while hard-working Americans are losing their jobs, homes and retirement savings?
Let the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers kick in a few hundred billion to clean up their mess. They own the Federal Reserve Bank and the major financial institutions in the world. The Rockefellers own Chase Bank of New York. The Rothschilds — worth an estimated $150 trillion — own Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. President Bush should quit bullying legislators over the phone and give the Rockefellers and Rothschilds a call.
Souder has been pimping his grandson Grant in TV commercials in a cheap and obvious empathy campaign designed to manipulate female voters' emotions for votes in the November election. Souder's grandson Grant deserves not to be shamelessly exploited in such a manner. Grant also deserves a life in which he doesn't have to give his hard-earned money to the richest men in the world to pay for the fraud and robbery committed by those same rich men.