Gosh, doesn’t this sound familiar?
The government stepping in to let just about anybody borrow money regardless of their circumstances.
In fact, I’m relatively sure this is exactly what caused the problem in the first place. Ummm, yea, actually I’m completely positive of that.
Hmm lets think back to the first presidential debate when Obama claimed that deregulation was the cause of our economic ills. Here was my reaction then:
“Deregulation, Obama? Are you kidding? Was it deregulation that created organizations to give people loans that clearly weren’t qualified for them and never would have received them otherwise? Was it deregulation that mandated financial institutes give the same clearly unqualified people loans? Thus creating a massive and seemingly unending housing boom which then lead to a plethora of bad investments, investments which were sold by the government as safe investments. No Obama it wasn’t deregulation, it was idiots like you.”
But, obviously, Bush, Paulson, and the rest of our betterers in DC will never admitt that this is what happened and will, inevitably, stick with the same broken mentality that got us into this mess.
Does anybody see the supreme irony in this move by the government? I mean, yea, there’s the whole quandary of using the same tactics that got is in trouble in order to save us from that trouble. I’m almost convinced that this was the exact conversation that occured when this plan was being mulled over:
(several of Springfield’s best and brightest are stuck in a hole they dug while searching for buried treasure)
Mayor Quimby: Mmm, I guess we’re not gonna find anything.
Otto: Well how we gonna get outta here?
Homer: We’ll dig our way out!
Wiggum: No, no, dig up, stupid!
But I think, perhaps, the deeper irony lays in the fact that we are increasing our government’s debt for the express purpose of increasing consumer debt. In other words the government is spending money it doesn’t have in order to encourage people to spend money they don’t have. Does that sound like a downward spiral to fiscal hell to anybody else?
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin eventually weighed in on this…