Congress Just Doesn’t Get It

Congress continues to debate the government bailout package proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed chair Ben Bernanke and SEC chair Christopher Cox.  In the meantime, the markets are spooked and the credit markets are on the brink of complete collapse.  It seems, as always, that Congress just doesn’t get it.

The Congress may have forgotten (or most may not know) that the Great Depression not caused by the stock market crash of 1929, but by the failure of the Government to provide the liquidity banks needed at the time to keep their doors open and lend money to their customers.  While I’m not saying that we’re on the brink of another Great Depression (I’m an optimist by nature), we’re in a similar credit crunch and failure to act could damage our already struggling economy and add years to the time it will take to recover.

Ron Paul was right in his CNNPolitics.com commentary that this mess was created by artificially low interest rates that magnified the real estate bubble, and while his solution of rolling back stifling laws and regulations, divorcing oursleves of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, reducing the Federal buget deficit and reducing regulation will work in the long term, in the immediate term, this bailout is the best alternative we have to stabilize not only the U.S. economy, but the world economy as well.

Congress needs to finally get a clue, quickly put together a proposal with the oversight and CEO restrictions they want and pass the damn bill so the financial markets can return to some form of normalcy.

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This Time is Not Different

With the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers and the shotgun wedding between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, many investors are concerned with the viability of our financial markets.  Oh, how short our memories are.

Ten years ago, in 1998, a hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, failed, creating market panic similar to what we’re seeing today.  The fear at the time was that, due to the size of the fund and its leverage, having to sell its positions could destabilize the entire financial system.

Similar to today, the Federal Reserve and other large banks worked to minimize the damage from the collapse and the world financial system was ‘saved.’  Not only did the doomsday scenarios fail to materialize, but the stock market went on to log one of the longest bull market runs ever.

The moral of the story is that, altough financial crises like this are scary, even for the professionals, this time is most likely NOT DIFFERENT and our financial system will not only survive, but most likely survive.