From the “I told you so” file: Associated Press reports “After receiving billions in aid from US taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending it. Some won’t even talk about it.”
The Libertarian Party of Georgia has been opposed to every aspect of the financial bailout boondoggle since we mounted a ‘call your congressman’ campaign to block the first one in September. Our reasons have always been based on our philosophical commitment to individual liberty, small government, personal responsibility, and capitalism. We usually avoid utilitarian discussions, since utilitarianism accepts the overall premise and implies one’s only objection is to the details.
But Libertarians are not surprised that the banks getting the bailout money are unable or unwilling to account for its use. Everything about the bailout has been half-baked, made up as its gone along by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernake (who at least have had the grace to admit we are in uncharted waters), and lavished with unrelated earmarks and ideological butt-covering by the US Congress that is responsible for causing most of the current financial displacement in the first place. No one in government has thought beyond the 2010 Congressional elections; many can’t think beyond tomorrow’s stock market closing.
Our freedoms are best protected by the gross incompetence of the Federal Government (it was Will Rodgers who said “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for”). While there are many individual federal employees who put in an honest day’s work and genuinely try to help the citizens they deal with, the general incompetence of government is best seen in studies that show the IRS help line gives many different answers to the same taxpayer questions — coupled with the fact that the IRS holds you liable in court if you act on their incorrect answers.
The financial bailout is the largest economic intervention in American history, but it is driven by the same “But we’ve got to do something!” mentality that led FDR’s administration to deepen and extend the Great Depression. It is no surprise to Libertarians that those beneficiaries of the government largesse (i.e., of taxpayer money) are unable to say what they’ve done with the money; they probably do not know. After all, the entire bailout system has been blessed by a Congress that invented the baseline budget concept (those who live within their means will need this explanation: If an agency applied for a $10 Million budget increase but only gets an additional $5 Million, our Congress actually calls that a 50% budget cut!).
The Libertarian Party of Georgia does not expect AIG Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, General Motors, or the UAW to be able to account for what happens to the money they have gotten. And we do not expect any of these companies ever to pay back a penny of these so-called “loans.”
Don’t call us cynical. Call us Libertarians.
