Say Anything Blog

By Christopher Chantrill

I think this “crisis” will be overblown by the MSM, but this article contains some good stuff about govt interference in our lives, and its inevitable consequences:

Thank goodness the Plame Game is over and Scooter Libby safely convicted for-what exactly was it?  Now we can concentrate on the next Big Thing: the meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market. As a broker acquaintance commented: “Anyone could have seen that was coming.”

After “Bush Lied” it’s “liar loans.”

Companies which specialize in making loans to sub-prime customers are falling right and left. Marginal borrowers are having trouble paying the interest on their variable interest rate loans. Poster child for the industry’s troubles New Century Financial, has been cut off by its lenders, de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange, and barely surviving. Other companies are having so much trouble and downsizing that the market for office space faces a sudden glut in places like Orange County, CA, where the industry is concentrated.

The only thing that is uncertain is just how President Bush is to blame for the whole thing.  But never fear: the central skill of practical politics is to take the latest systemic government failure that “anyone could have seen was coming” and confidently blame it on the president.

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But let us look at the big picture.  Let us look at the big things that we spend money on.  There is housing, health care, education. Those are the big three.  Then there is transportation, food, clothing, housewares, recreation, savings.  Then there is taxes.

Notice anything?  The big three--housing, health care, and education--are so important that the governing class feels a compelling need to supervise them in detail.

[...]

One fine day we are going to stumble upon the radical notion that people ought to pay for the necessaries of life with their own money and with the minimum of privilege, subsidy and government control.

Progressive people will declare it to be a question of human rights.

Practical people will declare it to be a matter of common sense.

[...]

Read the whole thing; it’s chock-full of goodies.