Ahh, the headache, the nausea, the dry heaves of economic hangover. I hear everyone saying “why should the taxpayer bail out Wall Street?” I ask, why not the taxpayer.

Who else but the taxpayer is responsible for this mess? Back in 2003 we set the precedent by ceding Congress’ Constitutional authority to declare war. We have given Bush endless blank checks in the past- why stop now? Who else but the taxpayer gave the power of the purse to special interests- the Enrons, Haliburtons, Cargills, Monsantos, Bechtels and the like- or approved the tax cuts to rich folks, or tanked the dollar by rubber-stamping Republican irresponsibility in budgets since 2000?

It’s fun to listen to the speechifying on the House floor, as I’m doing right now. The claim that cutting Capital Gains Taxes to 0% is a responsible, free-market approach to solving the crisis that arises out of free-market approaches is, well, laughable. They also suggest an FDIC-style insurance scheme. How to fund it? The FDIC may well be massively over-leveraged, and functions on the idea that Confidence is supported by a 10% asset coverage of deposits. It’s probably no coincidence that they are called “confidence men.”

Our Constitution starts “We the People…” We authorize the state and federal governments and fund them. We bought the Reagan-Thatcher line and haven’t let go yet. Ultimate responsibility lays nowhere else but with us. You and I gave this sucker away- we should take the heat.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.