Friday Madness: Part Two

Headline: "Builders seek help to survive"

The original $700 billion that was to go to prop up banks and other choice financial firms was supposed to be the only money needed to head off a major recession. The money was to be used to help these companies to get these "toxic" debts off their books and ease their minds about getting the credit flowing again.

Unfortunately, Congress botched the TARP program up, just as it's botched so many other economic programs up in the past. Hell, the current crisis is rooted in government's economic meddling. If you let the undisciplined 2-year-old in the china cabinet a second time, what do you expect will happen? With nearly zero legislated regulation of the allocated funds, there are many questions about exactly where the billions in taxpayer dollars are going. With nearly zero legislated regulation of how those funds are being spent, banks are hoarding these massive gifts instead of turning the lending spigot back on. As such, the economy is in a freefall.

Apparently, Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve also feel they hold the power and wisdom to decide who should fail and who should survive. Bear Stearns? Too big to fail. Fidelity? Let them die. GM and Chrysler? We must save them!!! Wait a second, they're not banks...

But save them they have. Or at least they're on some short-term life support, thanks to that fiscal conservative, George Bush.

Now the precedent has been set. If the American auto industry (whatever that means anymore) is too valuable to fail, then so are so many other industries or sectors. I'll be damned if the porn industry didn't just start lobbying for it's own piece of the pie, to the tune of $5 billion.

Today I read that homebuilders across the country are throwing their weight together to help spur a separate $100 billion package to salvage their own industry.

Specifically, they are asking for tax credits of between $10,000 and $22,000 for home purchases through the end of 2009, and federal help in reducing mortgage rates.

Translation: Take money from you and me to give to other Americans so that they can buy a house. I say bullshit. Enough is enough. The homebuilding industry, just like any other, waxes and wanes. It's waning now. Due to some factors beyond its own control (again, like government rigging of the economy) and some within its own control (overbuilding), many of the building companies may be forced to go out of business. So be it.

I'm not trying to be a hard ass. I just know that in order for you and I to stay free, in order for us to retain our liberty, in order for us to keep the ability to succeed, we must also preserve the ability to fail.

If government keeps stepping in and, essentially, taking control of these industries, government will have all the control. When they do, you won't, and you lose your opportunity.

In order to maintain the health of a free market economy for the long term, the deadwood must be pruned every now and again. The people who do fail won't suffer for long, because opportunity will still be there for them. The opportunity to fail again, and, thus, also the opportunity to learn and succeed.