In an effort to pretend that they matter, Congress has passed a huge bill that is supposed to fix the economy and get things back on track. Of course, the full effects of the bill won’t be felt for a few years, much like the health care ‘reform’ bill that they passed earlier this, all the while calling the opponents of that bill racists for some reason.
I guess what we are seeing these days is the State (that is, a collection of selfish individuals with a monopoly on force) doing what it does best: add a layer of power on top of a broken system they created in the first place. The Statists do not wish to deregulate anything and instead are looking at the power they have and what they can do to benefit from it. In the old days, this was usually more direct where a king or some kind of monarch would favor certain individuals in return for rich rewards. These days, that is officially considered bribery, however, there is no shortage of loopholes to bribery when it comes to Congress.
The financial system is broken because at the root of it is a system based on debt. While debt is a great motivational tool to get people working harder and being more productive in order to make their payments, ultimately the steam has to run out at some point. From the brief descriptions of the bill in the various news articles, assuming they are accurate, it seems that the major contributions of this bill are new regulatory guidelines with regards to various transactions, many of which have nothing to do with why the housing market collapsed. You debit card swipes did not cause the housing market to collapse, it was the people who were trading investments based on mortgages.
In truth, this bill is really nothing more than an additional power grab brought to you by the same people who steal your income, legally of course, every time you make money legitimately. That is what this bill was all about and I am sure there are several hundred provisions in the bill for things wholly unrelated to financial matters or Wall Street investors.
Ultimately, I predict that if we leave things as they are, with this bill passed, it will do absolutely nothing to cancel out the boom and bust cycles we find ourselves constantly stuck in. For one thing, Congress enjoys these cycles because they can pass laws when things are good and nobody cares, and they can pass more tyrannical laws when things are bad and simply call them the solutions. In other words, I’m pretty sure this 2,300 page bill is a whole lot of horseshit. Another reason this won’t work is because Congress has yet to reign in the regulators who were asleep at the wheel when things crashed. Instead of investigating things like Bernie Madoff, they were instead jerking off at their desks all day (literally). None of those men have been fired, as far as I know.
But that’s OK. Everyone knows that as long as you are doing something in Congress, someone somewhere will be cheering you on. The mainstream press, both the conservative and liberal side, have always been pro-action when it comes to Congress. For once I’d like to hear a mainstream pundit stand up and demand that Congress do nothing.
Because sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do. Unfortunately, given the mental state of most politicians, do nothing is pretty much like a heroin addict giving up heroin and then running a marathon in the winter. In other words, they just simply cannot help themselves. They have to pass laws, no matter how unconstitutional, tyrannical, or just plain stupid these laws really are.