The Bush speech tonight on the “financial crisis” reminds me of another phantom crisis he used to get Congress to spend hundreds of billions of tax payer money…the Iraq War.

Linking terrorism to Iraq got Congress to roll over and put billions in the pockets of defense contractors and oil companies. Linking the mortgage crisis to a financial market collapse will put billions of dollars into the banking sector’s pockets…the only other industry that wields more power than defense and oil.

Bush Speech - The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Just like voting for the Iraq war, if Congress votes for this $700 Billion boondoggle, they will regret it. This new attempt to get Congress to pass legislation giving never-before granted powers to the Administration - at lightening speed - before any real questions can be asked or answered - is the tell-tail sign something fishy is happening.

Bush did give an accurate accounting of the events explaining the mortgage and real estate crisis in a cogent manner. But where he went off the rails, is in the effect and the impact of his proposed solution.

Here again we have striking similarities in the war on terror. The solution of giving Rumsfeld untethered authority to wage war on Iraq was not the solution to terrorism…neither is giving Hank Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, unfettered power to spend $700 Billion bailing out the banking industry.

Just like the mistakes of Rumsfeld, mis-allocating his resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, Paulson is loath to give money directly to home owners in foreclosure opting instead to give it to the largest financial institutions in the world. The argument can be made if you really want to stop the financial crisis eliminating individual Americans facing foreclosure would support real estate prices which in turn would free up the credit markets.

Just like narrowing the war on terrorism to hunting down actual terrorists where there is no high paying corporate constituency to benefit from such a doctrine and was therefore rejected out of hand, there is no corporate benefactor for helping foreclosure victims in the mind of Bush administration and was never on the table either.

Bush’s speech was sounding an alarm alright, but it was more the “boy who cried wolf” to me.

Congress won’t see it that way and Bush and Paulson will get their bailout. Meanwhile, millions of families will continue to lose their homes, real estate values will continue to fall, and they will be back asking for money very soon using inflammatory language to get their way.

Using the adage from another Bush speech when he butchered the saying, “Fool me once shame of me…fool me twice….ah ..ah…well I’m not gonna let ya fool me twice…hehe”.

My sentiments exactly.

Good Luck!

Previous Post:«

Next Post:»

Tags: • •