Hey Buddy, Can You Spare $700 Billion?

cross posted at Right Michigan

This was both predictable and avoidable. This was not some previously undetected asteroid that suddenly appeared in our telescopes, one we were forced to sit silently by and watch as it slowly overtook us in our orbit, helpless to respond in any meaningful manner. Nope, this sucker was sitting there like a huge middle-of-the-forehead pimple on picture day--something that had to be aggressively ignored to overlook. Where, exactly, is Bruce Willis when we need him, or absent Willis, where do you think he put that box of medicated Oxy pads and the concealer?

The crisis we face today is more akin to a lumbering iceberg that practically has to be aimed at to be plowed into so directly. As Thomas Andrews explained to Captain Edward Smith on one fateful April night nearly 100 years ago, the sinking of the unsinkable ship he commanded was now a "mathematical certainty."

Of course, in those days, Smith didn't have all the technology available to him that today's captains have, nor did he have tens of thousands of people on his side, hired explicitly to spot avoidable hazards. Still, he floated atop the decks of the one of the most perfectly engineered ships to ever have been launched. He knew it. His crew knew it. His ship's owners knew it. So did the passengers. And, while Smith and his crew may have been overconfident and under prepared, at least the RMS Titanic's crew did have a very good chance of accidentally navigating its way through a sea of icebergs on its maiden and final voyage, regardless of how blind and irresponsibly they steamed onward. Remember too, it wasn't until after the ill fated ship had sustained a 300 foot gash in its hull that Thomas Andrews made his sober pronouncement.

That is not the case here. This was both predictable and avoidable. While some of the people we should be able to count on in such times accomplished the task of predicting, not one elected, appointed or hired person bothered to do the second and more important task of avoiding.

I do admit taking some liberty with the analogy. Because, the fact is, many experts are still divided as to whether our economy has actually hit an iceberg or not. What is certain is that the situation we are sitting in now, as stressing as it is and as dangerous as it might yet prove to be, had its seed planted many years ago by busybody captains that injected socialist utopian ideals into the free market economy. The outcome of their dalliances were predictable, and they were predicted.

Most notably, Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, and John McCain made public warnings about the course that was set. Just as notably, Barney Frank, whose closest encounter with a profitable private venture amounted to a prostitution ring being run out of his apartment, spoke of the rock-solid foundation that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rested on. Score one for the Republicans.

The momentum that was begun in the Jimmy Carter administration and honed and tempered in the Clinton administration, became the Bush administration's problem in 2001. Regardless of the assurances the crackpot Barney Frank had to offer, Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Whatever score the Republicans mustered by accurately predicting the upcoming crisis, they squandered it by not heeding their own warnings when they had a bulletproof opportunity to do so.

The Republicans can cast blame all they want at the Democrats and vice versa, what we have here are two political parties, one with vision too poor, and the other with constitution too weak, to take care of one of its most basic of responsibilities, that of protecting the people of the country that elected them to do so.

So, here we sit, and I honestly do not know what is the best route to take to get us out of this mess. As it turns out, enough experts have lined up on opposite sides of the issue to make me feel almost cerebral in my ignorance.

We might do nothing and thrive as a country by allowing the weakest of financial firms to fail as the free market would dictate, or we might do nothing and bring on what some are predicting to be a ten year deep depression. We might finance a bail out that would allow us to transition to a more stable financial environment while keeping our economy out of recession, or we might finance a bail out that cements our economy to a European vision of socialism, forever lethargic and poor performing--a place where ten per cent unemployment would be something to dream about.

I look at today's financial crisis with a lot of disgust and disappointment, and in truth, more of my disappointment is aimed at the Republicans than it is at the Democrats. More of my disgust? Hey, Barney, are you listening? Oh, and Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, did all those campaign contributions come in handy?

This does not mean that I think Republicans are more to blame here because there is enough blame here to slather around on both sides of the aisle. No, this means only that I hold so called conservatives to a higher standard--they are the party that says it prefers free market principles to drive the economy. I certainly am disgusted with Democrats that advocate the relentless push toward hard socialism, but when they do what they say they are going to do, how can I honestly be disappointed in their actions? I appreciate their honesty if not their intelligence.

Republicans? What else can I say other than that Contract With America looked pretty darn good on paper, at least before all that invisible ink faded.

Less than a week after the sinking of the Titanic, Thomas Andrews' father received a telegraph from New York that spoke of his son's final hours.

"INTERVIEW TITANIC'S OFFICERS. ALL UNANIMOUS THAT ANDREWS HEROIC UNTO DEATH, THINKING ONLY SAFETY OTHERS. EXTEND HEARTFELT SYMPATHY TO ALL."

Andrew Thomas appears to have been the type of man that put his principles first. He might not have been cut out for politics.