Virg Bernero: "Hey, let's make a bank!"

If you love the efficiency of the post office, or of Amtrak, or of any other highly taxpayer subsidized enterprise that competes with the private sector on a daily basis, you are absolutely going to love the latest proposal by Michigan gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero.

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero on Tuesday proposed having Michigan follow the lead of North Dakota and open a state-owned bank that could make low-interest loans to businesses and college students.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate said the state bank also could ease the foreclosure crisis by buying down mortgage portfolios held by smaller banks in Michigan and partner with other private banks on economic development projects.

"Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs," Bernero said in a release.

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What Virg seems to be unable to fathom is that the credit crunch is the result of stupid government busybodies like himself not only enacting regulations that enticed lenders to play Texas Hold 'em with depositor's money, but also pronounced the gamblers too vital to the American economy to fail. Their wise intrusions into what should be a private enterprise have tightened the credit markets so thoroughly that even the Chinese are starting to tire of our panhandling.

Who is Virg going to put in charge of this bank? Will it have employees? Will the new bureaucracy compete with private sector banks, or will it instead lend money only to bad risk clients like the ones that the Community Reinvestment Act favored? (You know, the ones that that people like Washington Mutual and Citibank wouldn't have touched with a ten foot pole had not the government incentivized the risky lending.) Will it operate efficiently, or will it, like every other facet of state government, be manned by the efficient and friendly thugs of some government service union? Will businesses owned by friends of bureaucrats be favored? If it makes a profit, will this profit be distributed to taxpayers as a dividend, or will it be used to pump money taken from the private sector into the pipe dreams of bureaucrats?

There are an infinite amount of reasons to not like this proposal. If the government truly wants to let businesses and entrepreneurs achieve, CUT THE FRIGGEN REGULATIONS DOWN IN THIS STATE! Don't instead enter the lending business to not only compete with private banks for viable customers, but to lend money to people whom the banks think are too risky!

This is a lose/lose situation for Michigan. No wonder Virg loves it.

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