John Stossel wrote an insightful piece recently called The Road to Serfdom, a borrowing of the title of the book by F. A. Hayek. He talks about how everyone is waiting for Obama to come out with some action. He needs to be BOLD. Just do something. I guess that is the change that we are looking for.

Here is The-Asterisk's take on it:

The reason that we all look to Washington for solutions is that Washington is the place that owns the game and writes the rules. As long as they do that, we have to grovel at their feet. If we have a free market and we let things go laissez faire, we end up with very smart and very well connected crooks creating the mess that we are just now trying to fix.

What is the difference between Las Vegas and Wall Street? Vegas has pit bosses and cameras. They know when they are being gamed. There is no way that our government can be swift enough to keep regulations up with the latest scheme by money people. So we cry (like Bill O'Reilly) that no one was watching and no one did anything, but if the heel of the SEC was pushed onto the neck of Wall Street, everyone would complain. What is the answer??? Boom and bust is the answer.

Did anyone complain about the rising price of housing when it came time to sell their house? Nope. Did anyone complain about a shady mortgage deal when a $50,000/yr worker bought a $450,000 home? Nope. What would have happened if Bush had come out in 2004 and said that he wanted to build less homes and tamp down the increase in prices? What would the builders and the lumber yards and the Lennar's and Toll Brothers' have done? Rioted, that is what! What if Clinton had come out in 1998 and said that no one could have high speed internet because we were going too fast? Yeah, that was going to happen. What leader wants to shoot himself in the foot on purpose?

What is the answer? Usually the ones that contribute to the mess are the ones that suffer the most. Unfortunately, this bust we are in is the convergence (IMHO) of a number of factors happening at once. That is why it is so bad.

So what is our choice? Government as our savior, or government as the rule maker? Or, none of the above????

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