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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (146827)	11/11/2008 6:05:58 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

So you now admit that Fannie and Freddie were not the entire cause of the problem Admit seems to imply that I said otherwise before. I never did, so saying that is no admission in that sense, its been my position from the beginning. You want the government to just be neutral? Yes. Don't you want the government to encourage capital expenditures and the creation of new businesses? I want government to avoid discouraging capital expenditures and the creation of new businesses. Some people may look at, or argue for, removal of barriers and discouragement as adding an encouragement, but my idea is just to have the government be more neutral, not trying to decide what is right for the economy as much as just trying not to hurt the economy. Since Fannie and Freddie and BS and Lehman and AIG are all in this mess, what does it matter if some were originally designated as government institutions? Originally designed as government institutions is the least of the distinctions. Politically controlled to follow the government's agenda, and implicitly guaranteed by the feds are the important ones. Through Fannie and Freddie (and also in many other ways) the government pushed the market forward down the wrong path. Maybe without these pushes, you wouldn't have the problems with Lehman, AIG, etc. Maybe you would. But if you did, the problems would not have been as large. That is a failure of management on all levels both government and private. Sure but 1 - The government shouldn't have been involved in the first place, and its involvement made the problem bigger. 2 - The government distorted the incentives for the private sector, helping to create that failure of management on the private side.