It
is terrifying to see our financial system crumbling because of corruption on
Wall Street, aided and abetted by government policies of too much federal
spending, debt, and intervention in the economy. But it is also troubling to
see our economic system of free enterprise slipping away as the candidates of
both major political parties propose more federal intervention, spending and
debt as solutions to these problems. Our media have an obligation to inform the
American people that we are moving into a full-blown socialist economy. 

At
this point, with the financial crisis continuing to grow, isn’t it apparent
that the “bailout” plan was in no real sense a “rescue,” as both the liberal
and conservative media were calling it?

On
Glenn Beck’s CNN show on October 6, Stephen
Moore of the Wall Street Journal editorial page at least had the integrity to
admit he was just wrong. He said he is “embarrassed” over endorsing the
“rescue” plan. “I want to apologize,” he said. “I drank the Kool-aid.” There
are many more in the media who should feel embarrassed and issue apologies, and
I discussed them in several columns for Accuracy
in Media.

On
Fox News, for example, “conservative” Fred Barnes called House conservatives
“crazy” and “idiotic” for opposing the plan. Now who looks like the idiot? 

On
CNBC, the plan was considered so vital and important that correspondent
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera led a discussion of how to bypass Congress and the
Constitution when the House initially failed to approve it.

Rather
than rescue anything, these airheads have endorsed a socialist-style takeover
of the financial sector, paid for with more federal spending and debt. To make
matters worse, they won’t label it for what it is―socialism.

The
situation is now so bad that Republican presidential candidate, John McCain,
tried to move to the left of the Democrat, Barack Obama, during Tuesday night’s
debate by proposing that he would “order the secretary of the treasury to
immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America…” McCain didn’t explain
where this authority would come from. But this proposal, which is estimated to
cost $300 billion, followed his statement that “We obviously have to stop this
spending spree that’s going on in Washington.”

On
top of this monumental gaffe, in a tragic but humorous example of Washington doublespeak,
the McCain campaign issued a statement calling this socialist proposal the “American Homeownership Resurgence Plan.”

This debate performance followed McCain’s
announcement that he would “tap” people such as former Democratic
vice-president Al Gore to work in his administration on developing a new and
much tougher U.N.-sponsored global warming treaty. Gore is considered a menace
among conservatives for falsifying the causes and dangers of global warming in
order to increase government control over our lives. “I have great respect for
Al Gore,” McCain said.   Once again,
Barack Obama would agree.

On the Washington Wire blog of the Wall Street
Journal, the responses to the McCain “resurgence plan” on housing were
interesting and informative. They included:

·       
McCain
is sounding more like Obama every day. This truly is a race to the bottom.

·       
After
bailing out the Wall Street crooks, I’m bailing out the irresponsible and
greedy speculators? What has happened to freedom and accountability that made America great?

·       
Oh,
great, now even McCain is a socialist! Is this part of the spending freeze
proposal?? We have lost our minds.

In a
statement on the plan, issued after the debate, the campaign claimed that the
next president would already have the authority to buy up these mortgages under
the socialist-style “bailout” plan approved by Congress. That is a matter of
dispute. But the statement does admit, in its final sentence, that “It may be
necessary for Congress to raise the overall borrowing limit.” That means more
debt.

Another
McCain proposal was to recommend an increase from $100,000 to $250,000 for FDIC
insurance on deposits. This, too, was supported by Obama, and it was
incorporated in the “bailout” bill. But as financial analyst and adviser Peter
Schiff has noted, this proposal was not coupled with extra money budgeted to
fund the increased taxpayer liability. “Only in Washington would a bill pass which
simultaneously makes banks more likely to fail while increasing taxpayer
exposure when they do!” he commented.

McCain
also proposed that “we use the exchange stability fund that the Treasury has
available―$250 billion―to shore up these [U.S. financial] institutions.” But
the Exchange Stabilization Fund was never intended for such a purpose. It was
established to defend the value of the U.S. dollar. However, it was used during
the Clinton Administration, without a vote of approval by Congress, to prop up
the Mexican peso. This U.S.
taxpayer-backed bailout scheme was arranged by then-Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin, who had been co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, which was heavily invested in
Mexico.

This
is the same Goldman Sachs which spawned the Bush Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Paulson, who sparked the current financial panic and quickly offered a
three-page proposal to make himself a financial dictator of the United States
in order to solve it.

Now
that he has assumed this power (after the three-page proposal mushroomed into
more than 400 pages, complete with pork barrel spending to get the necessary
votes for passage), Paulson has named a former Goldman Sachs banker, Neel
Kashkari, to run the Treasury Department’s program to buy troubled assets.
Kashkari is the new Treasury Department Assistant Secretary and will run the
new “Office of Financial Stability.”

This
appointment has drawn fire from Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Republican of Michigan,
on the right, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, on the left. “His
appointment seems like appointing a fox to protect the hen house,” noted
Kucinich.

National
security expert and former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney warned two years ago
about Bush’s appointment of Paulson, calling him the “Armand Hammer of China,” a reference to the
businessman who built up the power of the old Soviet Union in exchange for
favors from the communists. At a time when Paulson was up for Senate
confirmation, Gaffney asked, “Will any of his Senate interlocutors even bother
to explore the nominee’s troubling fifteen-year ties to Communist China and the
potential for serious conflicts of interest they pose, with national security
as well as economic implications for our country?” The answer was no. Paulson’s
nomination was confirmed by unanimous voice vote.

As
we noted in a column, Paulson’s plan, which
was passed by Congress, includes a provision to enable him to bail out banks in
China and other countries
holding U.S.
financial assets. This is one of many conflicts of interest involving Paulson
and China.

In
a little-noticed dispatch from Beijing on
September 25, the Reuters news agency reported that Chinese regulators had told
its domestic banks “to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to
prevent possible losses during the financial crisis…”

What
did Paulson know and when did he know it? Congressional “leaders,” as well as
Bush, McCain, and Obama, seem to have no interest in getting to the bottom of
this. 

In
terms of the media, where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins when we really need
them? 

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