The proposed economic bailout plan is certainly dominating the airwaves at the moment. So much so that I couldn’t resist throwing in my two cents (knowing full well that these days two cents is virtually worthless in a world of $700+ billion dollar government market take-over plans and trillion dollar deficits).
I would find the whole dynamic between the many sides of this economic crisis hilarious in its irony if the situation wasn’t so dire.
The die-hard free market capitalistas clamoring and pleading for one of the, if not the, biggest socialistic moves into their holiest of holy free market are probably the most amusing group in this whole debacle. Here we have people who will decry and bemoan the slightest regulation on nearly any aspect of business as inferring with the free market and infringing on their right to conduct business in the way that they see fit. This is a group of people who will swear up and down that the market is guided by an invisible hand (essentially meaning the consumer) that guides a completely self correcting system so long as that system is left to its own devices. And, yet, it is these very people who are all but demanding that the government step in to “artificially” correct the mess that their unregulated market has become. Granted there are some ideologs from this group in Congress who, despite the apparent need, will not sign off on the bailout but these make up a minority when compared to the calls from Wall Street.
I do not understand how we have not grasped the fact the fact that an unbridled free market does not work and never did. If this is not proof that some regulation is good then I do not know what kind of catastrophe will solidify that point. Bottom line; it should not get to this point. There would be no need for a massive injection of the government into the economy if those responsible for regulating the market would do so responsibly. To borrow an idea from the medical field, preventative measures are always better and cheaper in the long run. Over the last eight or so years our economy was like a four-hundred pound fat kid with diabetes cramming down sugar while his mom sat by and watched because her baby knows when to quit. And, now that the fat kid has slipped into a coma mom finally decided to take him to the doctor who is ready to try anything to save the kid. But, I guarantee that once the kid looses some weight and wakes up, mom is just going to take him home and let him start back on the sugar because her baby knows when to quit. When really what that kid needs is a good set of dietary rules to follow and a mom that is going to enforce those rules and even come up with new ones if some new, exciting candy bar hits the market.
Put another way, the market is a just a very big and complex game and like any game with any complexity it needs well thought out and well enforced rules and when someone releases an expansion to the game it better come with some new rules as well.