This is a speech Ron Paul gave on the House floor before the bailout vote. It’s a bit dated, but his words should be heeded.

H/T Sarber2020

Everything We Know For Federal Bailout We Got From Nigerian E-Mail is the funniest thing I’ve heard (er…read) all day. It also explains the bailout better than our elected officials are doing!

To: [Undisclosed recipients]
From: The White House
Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

My fellow Americans,

I am TOP OFFICIAL IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT who have confidence in your ability and reliability to prosecute a TRANSACTION REQUIRING YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. Read full article.

Now it’s the Senate’s turn and they took the 100+ page bill from the House and blew it up to 451 pages. I’ve been working all day and haven’t had the opportunity to do more than scan the bill. There is a provision which would grant the SEC the authority to suspend mark to market accounting, which is a positive.

One of my readers has been pouring over the bill and has offered me some of his insights. I’ve also received communication from my investment company. As I write this I have the (dis)pleasure of listening to Barack Obama explain this bill. If I hear one more Democrat talk about who caused this crisis I may scream. But I digress.

My impression is that this is a large, complex piece of legislation that may temporarily stop the bleeding, but it does not address the underlying cause.

I haven’t heard anything about putting an end to those government sponsored agencies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I haven’t heard anything about encouraging the government or citizens to stop spending money they don’t have and to live within their means.

This is very disappointing. But hey, what do I know?

Floor speech transcript, Sept. 29th: 

The speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from Michigan is recognized for three minutes.

Mr. (Thaddeus) Mccotter: Thank you. I rise today not to change anyone’s mind but to express to my constituents my reasons for opposing this bill. There will always be time and pretext enough for people to compromise their principles and put forward poor public policy that may in the short run be popular but in the long run will be detrimental to the long-term interests of the American people. We learn this through history. In the 1832 Bank Panic, Andrew Jackson had the question of whether he would remove the Bank of the United States’ charter. The people in the bank did not like that. They threatened the prosperity of the American people and in the middle of the panic Andrew Jackson looked at these bankers and said: “There are no necessary evils in government. The treasury to you, gentlemen, is closed.” This was an act of courage on the part of President Jackson because he understood what was at stake was not merely an ephemeral prosperity or a panic caused by the very people with their hand out. Andrew jackson understood this was about majoritarian rule. It was about the faith in the people’s representative institutions and those who inhabit the seats in which they are entrusted. Today we are in a global financial bank panic. It is the first of our global economy. We are seeing a leveraged bailout of the United States treasury. And in the end these interests that want your money are threatening your prosperity. And the choice you face is this. You will lose potentially, for prosperity for a short period of time, at the expense of your long-term liberty. Once the federal government has got you to take that risk and pass it onto you as a quote-unquote moral hazard, they will be in the marketplace and as the free market is diminished your freedom itself is diminished. And as your Congress does not stand up to these and put forward a better plan that truly protects the taxpayers and truly has the long-term interests of the United States at heart, you will be in jeopardy of losing both your prosperity and your liberty. The choice is stark and it was put forward in the book by Doestoevsky. In the Brothers Karamazov the Grand Inquisitor came to Jesus and he said if you wish to subject the people, give them miracle, mystery and authority; but above all give them bread. And it has always been the temptation in a crisis especially to sacrifice liberty for short-term promises of prosperity. And it was no mistake during that during the 1917 Bolshevik revolution the slogan was “Peace, land, and bread.” Today you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom. I suggest that the people on Main Street have said they prefer their freedom, and I am with them. I yield back.

Barack Obama had a speech prepared to celebrate the passage of the bill to bail out Wall Street. No doubt, he was ready to take credit for saving the United States from another Great Depression. He was so confident he didn’t even bother to convince those 95 democrats who voted against the bill. Now there’s some leadership for ya!

When he heard the news of the bill going down in flames, he had to postpone his speech by 40 minutes to scrape together a new speech. Why he needed 40 minutes to spew his tired old garbage is a mystery.

While he declined to cast blame on any one person for the crisis, Obama ripped McCain’s previous support for the de-regulation he says contributed to the collapse on Wall Street. “He’s fought against common-sense regulations for decades, he’s called for less regulation twenty times just this year, and he said in a recent interview that he thought de-regulation has actually helped grow our economy,” Obama said. “Senator McCain, what economy are you talking about?”

“I read the other day that Senator McCain likes to gamble. He likes to roll those dice,” he continued. “One thing I know is this - we can’t afford to gamble on four more years of the same disastrous economic policies we’ve had for the last eight. Read full story.

But according to Obama, this is not the time for partisan politics.

In case anyone is wondering which party stood in the way of stricter regulation of Fannie and Freddie, perhaps this video will help. While Obama blames John McCain’s policies for causing the current financial crisis, he fails to recall John McCain’s efforts in 2006 to pass the Federal Housing Regulatory Reform Act of 2005. The status of that bill is “dead”.

In the famous words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That’s sort of the feeling I have today. Watching the stock market fall certainly was no fun. But witnessing the preservation of American freedom was kinda nice.

Did you catch the partisan bickering on Capital Hill? Nancy Pelosi started the day with a bitterly partisan speech. Not exactly the best way to win favor or move people over to your side. The Democrats were quick to blame Republicans for the bill’s failure. They forgot to mention the 95 Democrats who voted against the bill.

Democrats control Congress, why did they need Republicans to go along with them? If they wanted this bill passed it should have been easy. They even had 65 Republican votes to help them along. Where was Barack Obama, the leader of the Democratic Party? Why wasn’t he in Washington, lobbying members of his own party to vote for the bill?

I think the Dems may want to quiet down on this one.

Now it’s time to head back to the drawing board and come up with some free market solutions to this problem. They need more oversight (which the Democrats fought tooth and nail - watch this video from 2004) and accountability. Americans want to see those responsible for this mess investigated and punished, not rewarded.

Here is the text of the bailout bill that Congress will probably vote on tomorrow. I don’t suggest reading this over breakfast. I’ve only read about the first 30 pages so far, but I already feel like a big sucker. I’ve been paying my mortgage all these years. Read the rest of this entry »

What do 75% of American voters and Mike Pence (R-IN) have in common? You guessed it, opposition to the Wall Street bailout. Pense is urging his colleagues to vote against the bill and wrote the following letter.

Dear Colleagues:

Our nation has been confronted by a serious crisis in our financial markets. The President and this Congress were right to act with all deliberate speed in addressing this crisis.

We now have a deal that promises to bring near-term stability to our financial turmoil, but at what price?

Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. Read the rest of this entry »