Meanwhile, Back At The Launch

...China's gone spacewalking. One suspects them of picking up an extra little zot of glee at doing so while Wall Street burns and never mind that of the two spacesuits, only one was Chinese made. (The other was of well-tested Russian make. Just in case? They're not saying). I'm tellin' ya, keep an eye on the Moon, the Red Chinese will claim it if nobody's watchin'.

But in our last exciting episode, the presidential candidates were each lookin', in their own way, for a quiet spot to slip into their Savior Of The Economy And/Or Nation superhero longjohns while the White House plowed pragmatically onward and Congressthings* from the far ends of both parties set up a huge fuss. Each and every one of them screeching about "free markets"and/or "capitalism" all the while.

Here is a hint, O tax-sucking, "campaign contribution"-snaffling scum-in-office: If you are talking about what you would or should do to it, the market is not free. Nor has it been for some time. The mess was created in large part by meddling, by artificially forcing down the standards for lending, home loans especially, pushed down by the Congressionally-created socialist entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, yadda-yadda. We haven't got a "free market" in the 'States, have not had for a very, very long while; when it fails, that's the hand of the Federal government driving it over the cliff and when it soars, it's one of two things: either it's found a way around some FedGov chokepoint or found a way to subvert one for short-term gain. Increasingly, the latter is more popular, followed in due course by senators tsk-tsking over the greedy awfulness of it all while covering up the tracks of the money that's come their way from those mean ol' profiteers -- who would have had to resort to less-subtle scams were the Feds not involved.

Whatever kind of deal is worked out, we -- the citizenry in general, from the guy pushin' a shopping cart full of salvaged cans to the fattest of fat cats -- will lose and the U. S. Congress will win. Some of us will lose more than others but we'll all lose: prop the mess up and we get a whopping addition to the deficit which will have to paid some day (and payment in blood and privation seems with every passing day more likely than cash on the barrelhead), or the market goes smash and we endure a lasting, painful recession probably followed by a nice little war, the traditional fix of meddling governments everywhere. Senators, Representatives and their respective deliberative bodies will become more powerful, as will the Executive branch and future historians will point to it all as just another step in the transformation from Republic to Whatever. And our much-vaunted free market will continue becoming more and more controlled.

I wish I had some really good advice; I wish there was a candidate or a party I could point to and say, "These folks can sort this thing out," but any bunch who could do that have got too much power and no person or group has sufficient knowledge and understanding to fix it. Wishing any of them could it like countin' on Santa to bring you what you need: not gonna happen. The "fix" is to get the Feds the hell out of the business of business -- and they have been propping it up, cropping the ears and breeding for a puppyish disposition for so long that were they to do so, the resulting readjustment would make a mess it would take a generation to sort out.

Maybe it should happen anyway. But I don't see the real world playing out like the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged. We're a bit short of Galts and Gulches an' Midas Mulligan's been in a Federal pen for a good long while now, accused of "redlining."

I'm gonna go shoot bowling pins. I hope nobody minds me callin' 'em by the names of Congressbeings!

Have a nice day?
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* Not for nothing is "congress" in English a clinical synonym for a sexual act between two or more individuals.