Government created the financial market climate responsible for the risky loans that should never have been given. Yet government has now appointed itself the savior that will rescue us from bad decisions made by government. How this guy can be so far off base is amazing.

Self-reliance. Individual responsibility. A faith in free markets and a belief that people should have the opportunity to fail or succeed on the basis of their hard work and ingenuity. These are qualities that have been as central to the national identity as they have been to the American economic model.

Which is why it is so extraordinary that the government now finds itself hip-deep in the direct management of the financial system, rescuing four of the country’s biggest financial institutions — Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and now Lehman Brothers — from the harsh discipline of markets and the consequences of their own misjudgments.

This unprecedented intrusion of government is coming in the waning days of the administration of a Republican president who made privatization, deregulation and a faith in free markets the centerpiece of his economic policies and of his political agenda.

In case you don’t know it Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by the federal government.

In recent months, the nation’s two largest mortgage finance lenders have come under increasing scrutiny at the hands of Congress, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Federal National Mortgage Association, nicknamed Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation, nicknamed Freddie Mac, have operated since 1968 as government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This means that, although the two companies are privately owned and operated by shareholders, they are protected financially by the support of the Federal Government. These government protections include access to a line of credit through the U.S. Treasury, exemption from state and local income taxes and exemption from SEC oversight. A recent accounting scandal at Freddie Mac that resulted in the replacement of three of the company’s top executives has led to mounting concerns over the privileged status these GSEs enjoy in the marketplace.

Let’s say your daughter got raped. Would you hire the rapist to provide your daughter therapy? That’s as silly as bringing in the federal government to fix the problems it created by allowing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to make irresponsible loans under the protection of law.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The collapse of the national housing market in the wake of the Great Depression discouraged private lenders from investing in home loans. Fannie Mae was established in order to provide local banks with federal money to finance home mortgages in an attempt to raise levels of home ownership and the availability of affordable housing.

Initially, Fannie Mae operated like a national savings and loan, allowing local banks to charge low interest rates on mortgages for the benefit of the home buyer. This lead to the development of what is now known as the secondary mortgage market. Within the secondary mortgage market, companies such as Fannie Mae are able to borrow money from foreign investors at low interest rates because of the financial support that they receive from the U.S. Government. It is this ability to borrow at low rates that allows Fannie Mae to provide fixed interest rate mortgages with low down payments to home buyers. Fannie Mae makes a profit from the difference between the interest rates homeowners pay and foreign lenders charge.

Let me be bold. If this cycle of hiring the problem creator to manage the problem continues, foreign armies will one day arrive here to collect the debts we are unable to repay.

Meanwhile a retard named Steven Pearlstein prattles on about free markets with nary a glimmer of understanding.

If these actions had been taken in Moscow, Paris, Beijing or even Brasilia, they would have seemed merely confirmation of long-standing socialist instincts and traditions. But in Washington, they are revolutionary. As with the Great Depression, it has taken a full-blown financial crisis to shake the faith that free markets will always deliver better outcomes than politicians and bureaucrats.

What free market you moron? Franklin Delano Roosevelt set the stage for the socialist controlled market in 1938! The current conditions are the direct result of government interference in free markets. Your advocating more government interference is akin fighting a fire by pouring fuel on it. What the hell is wrong with you people?

Whether we’ll admit it or not, we are a communist nation. As such, no one is free to fail. No one is free to succeed either. In fact, no one is free at all. We are all pawns in the hands of the politicians - those proud men and women who tell us that they take our money for our own good. Since this country wasn’t originally intended to become a communist nation, these schemers still mostly have to steal our money on weekends.

At irregular intervals, the weekend also brings news of the latest installment of the incremental nationalization of the investment markets. This began several months ago with the federally backed and brokered buy-out of Bear Stearns. Over the most recent weekend this process reached an important milestone when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were transformed from fascist entities — that is, “public-private” partnerships — into fully realized, federally owned socialist organs.

Legendary investor Jim Rogers, as usual, speaks the unalloyed truth when he observes that the Fannie/Freddie bailout demonstrates that “America is more socialist than China right now,” with government redistributing wealth for the benefit of the politically connected super-rich. (That’s how socialism always works in practice, of course.)

Once again, to the surprise of nobody who has been paying attention, this development was praised by the presidential candidates from both wings of the Ruling Party. And as with all such socialist undertakings, the very first priority of the officials who seized Fannie and Freddie was to assure the apparatchiks that their jobs were secure.

Security only lasts until there are more parasites feeding on the hosts than the hosts can or are willing to support. Once that tipping point is reached both host and parasite suffer, and one or both die. America’s current political class on both sides of the aisle have made their careers on fostering the mentality of parasitism. No matter how useless you are to society, no matter how little you contribute, no matter how poor the decisions you make someone else will always be there to bail you out.

Unfortunately that is how America, the land of the free and the home of the brave (gag) have arrived at a national debt so staggering that it cannot be comprehended, even by the thieves who were instrumental in creating it. We are reaching the end of the balance between the producers and the consumers. Each massive bailout defrauds the American taxpayer and inexorably speeds up the slow decline of the behemoth known as American government. When the flames are licking their way up the walls of the Capitol building don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

TANSTAAFL

The cult of Obama apparently doesn’t extend to everyone. Four idiots are being held on suspicion of plotting to kill our next President. The story itself is highly suspect. The parts don’t add up.

Law enforcement sources told Maass that one of the suspects “was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative.”

The story began emerging Sunday morning when Aurora police arrested Tharin Gartrell, 28. He was driving a rented pickup truck in an erratic manner, according to sources.

Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas.

A 750-yard shot from a high vantage point is very difficult on a human sized target, even with an high caliber rifle and an appropriate scope. You’d need to pre-sight your weapon from your actual vantage point, or have a spotter assisting you. Maybe both.

The last person who could make such a shot is a methhead. Look carefully at these two individuals. They are supposedly charter members of the Methhead Presidential Assassin’s Club. These doofuses don’t look competent enough to tie their own shoes, let alone carry out the type of plan that would end the life of Barack Obama from 750-yards away.

I think there are two possibilities.

A) These idiots were actually plotting to kill Obama. If so, they had a snowball’s chance in hell. I’d put 200,000 to 1 odds on failure.

B) This is just some sort of publicity stunt set up by the campaign to help further the cult of personality Obama seems to have become.

Either way, Obama was never in danger. He’ll be the next President and I’ll be irritated by most of what he says and does for the next four years. Remember kids, drugs and hitmen don’t really mix. Competent assassins don’t get high and drive around in pickup trucks with their weapons waiting to be arrested.

This whole story is just a plot to distract us from the fact that Obama’s only meaningful contribution to society is that he promises to take money away from some people, take a cut, and give the remainder to other people - all in the name of fairness.

Author’s note: photo and story are completely unrelated. Photo is just here to piss off people searching for the term “angry hummer” on the Internets.

There really isn’t anything like giving someone a Hummer to show how much you care.

Of course some people may argue that ramming your own Hummer into a house you own in order to let your renters know they should pay is is a real boner of a move, so to speak.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="450" caption="Angry Hummer loses battle with bus"][/caption]

NEWARK, Del. - Police have arrested a Newark area landlord who allegedly rammed his Hummer into a renter’s house, claiming the tenants were behind on their rent.

New Castle County Police spokesman Cpl. Trinidad Navarro said the 30-year-old landlord crashed the SUV into a home on Lute Court in Harmony Woods about 3 a.m. Thursday.

I’m not sure how intelligent it is to damage your own rental property with your personal vehicle all because your renters didn’t pay. Seems counter productive to me.

As this American nation enters the same end state that Rome did before it fell, we begin to see signs and portents. When guns are not readily available, battleaxes will do in a pinch.

Two men were arrested Tuesday by Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputies after investigators say they attacked a teenager with a medieval battle ax.

The key to catching the men was their apparent affiliation with Juggalos.

The men, both 21, were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated assault. The two were at the home of a 17-year-old Kearns boy at about 4:30 a.m.

One of the men was jealous of the victim text messaging a girl, according to jail documents. He also believed he contracted a sexually transmitted disease from the girl, which she in turn got from the victim, jail documents state.

During the altercation with the victim, that man stabbed the teen with a knife and the other man struck him with a medieval battle ax type of weapon in the back of his neck, said Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Paul Jaroscak. Doctors needed about 300 stitches to close the wound, he said. He was last listed in critical condition at a local hospital.

Ah, for sweet lost morality. In the age of easy porn and functionally illiterate fucktards with the attention span of the common gnat, we are bound to see many more such cases in coming years.

When children are raised by the state and by television and by the Internet they will find a four sided battleaxe, a bucket of STDs and a banal existence more often than not.