Big Brother chooses, you pay

Think about this trend we are seeing playing out. The ultimate causes of the Great Recession are that government wanted to be able to choose who gets what, and give goodies to people. They made a bunch of rule changes so their friends on Wall Street could do whatever they wanted. They didn't require that rating agencies do their jobs.

They even put a gun to banks heads and told them who they needed to give loans to, or else! By forcing banks, under threat of fines, jail, and closing their branches, to lend to people who couldn't afford loans and would have never been gifted them otherwise, government got to choose who got the goodies (houses the recipients couldn't afford) while banks had the risk stuffed down their throats. People were handed houses that would only cause them suffering and embarrassment later when they got foreclosed on, and government house fairies got to walk away clean. Oh, and we pay for the mess -- and pay for the mess on Wall Street too.


Why am I crying about this tomfoolery from the recent past? Well, it's still going on. Have you noticed that these same government "big brother knows best" types are still deciding which companies and industries get to live and which die? Coal must die. Wind farms must live. Goldman Sachs must live. Lehman Brothers must die. Some banks get unlimited cash. Others get none. Banks are all important. Investment banks are evil. Newspapers must live; talk radio must die. Labor unions must live, small businesses...eh, whatever.


Our federal government is in the process of taking over 71% of the economy (like old-school Europeans did before they learned better and fixed most of it). This is the era of vast market manipulation and the government gets to choose and distribute everything.


How's it working out for you? Not only is virtually every economic indicator still heading down or teetering on the edge, all those trillions disappeared with virtually no trace. Hundreds of billions are unaccounted for, and the Treasury and Fed are blocking legal efforts to find out where it went.

Here's my point. Governments have never been good at commanding and controlling economies before, choosing every winner and every loser, and staying ahead of the curve. Remember, these people who want to control every molecule of the economy had no idea one of the biggest crashes in history was coming. I knew! And I'm just...me. These are the people who feel confident they can micromanage every transaction? The people who run FEMA and the DMV and the Post Office? Seriously?

The track record of government bureaucrats doing this stuff is too humiliating to mention. I don't want to embarrass them. Watch how this pans out for the economy. It won't take long for the distortions and waste and fraud and inefficiencies to show up. Mark my words. Government micromanagement doesn't work and we will pay...and pay...and pay.


To read about how Ludwig von Mises destroyed the whole idea of command and control economies working out, just Google him and read about "the central planning problem" and "price discovery problem." It's tragicomic that some people still haven't caught on.