Piggy Pols In Hog Heaven With Pork-Packed Pact

by Daphne Ritter - October 2nd, 2008 - New York Post

Here, little piggies!

Congressional deal-brokers yesterday slopped a mess of pork into the $700 billion financial rescue bill passed by the Senate last night - including a tax break for makers of kids' wooden arrows - in a bid to lure reluctant lawmakers into voting for the package

Stuffed into the 451- page bill are more than $1.7 billion worth of targeted tax breaks to be doled out for a sty full of eyebrow-raising purposes over the next decade.

The $700 billion for pork approved yesterday, to be doled out to Democrat favored fannie mae and freddie mac and their banker buddies for damage from providing loans to unqualified home buyers, had to be the biggest pork fest in our nations history. I guess we just need to be thankful that targeted tax cuts only added a small $1.7 billion sweetener. Compared to the $700 billion staring price, that is barely a little "salt" on the top of this disastrous bill. Though that was only "salt", there was a total of nearly $100 billion in new pork in the bill as it was passed by the Senate.

Please note the important point: The causes of the crisis have not been fixed. The CRA law with all its penalties for bankers who do not comply is still sitting there demanding that a certain percentage of home loans given out must be no-doc, no-down loans in oversold areas of our cities to people who would otherwise not qualify for loans. These are the very same loans that resulted in huge foreclosures, thereby creating such a glut on the market that home prices collapsed. THIS IS STILL THE LAW OF THE LAND. In addition, the mark-to-market accounting rules put in place by Sarbanes-Oxley as a knee jerk reaction to Enron are still the law of the land as well. These are the very same stupid accounting rules that made banks write down perfectly fine values on loans whose borrowers were current with their payments (clearly not problem loans) creating the presumed liquidity crisis that ended banks having the ability to continue to fund our economy. THIS IS STILL THE LAW OF THE LAND.

Does anyone think that failure to fix the CAUSES of this sub-prime crisis will not guarantee that the crisis will occur again?

Sure the momentary risk of economic meltdown has been avoided, and it will take several years before the crisis occurs again, but this is not a fix. This is just a bandage. The consequences for America are going to be growing addiction to the disastrous economic system called socialism. The problem was caused by socialist manipulation of the home mortgage business. Now we have covered up the problem by socialist absorption of the losses by the American taxpayer.

This is not a good day for the future of our children. It will take a few years but the real cost of this bailout will still be paid by them.