We realize that the "hard sell" is traditional in real estate dealings. After all, ya gotta move the property to make that commission and win the blazer, and who's to say that the apocryphal "couple from Kansas City" might not actually exist, somewhere? As customary as the hard sell is in real estate or used cars, however, it has no place in politics or national monetary and fiscal policy. An entire country simply cannot afford to buy a pig in a poke, regardless of the alarming rhetoric spread by "the nation's top two economic leaders," as Benjamin Bernanke and Henry Paulson are described in an AP news report ("Bernanke & Paulson: Congress must move now," 09/23/08)
Frankly, the fact that the two individuals who would have the most power to gain by controlling money and credit are urging speed should make people extremely suspicious. If Bernanke and Paulson are so smart, why didn't they see the crisis coming? There has been a demonstration outside the Federal Reserve building in downtown Washington, DC every April for a couple of years now, and each year a warning about the dangerous financial situation of this country has been passed along "through channels" to Mr. Bernanke. Do you really think that someone who can't see what is happening right under his nose should be entrusted with an amount of money equal to nearly 7% of annual GDP, or almost a third of the total annual federal budget?
If you think that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in . . . you'll get rich off the tolls! Just send me a non-refundable deposit of $1 trillion; you'll make it back in no time. Just ask the federal government to bail you out, and I'm sure that Messrs. Bernanke & Paulson will be happy to approve and administer the funds.
Send my deposit in gold or silver, though. I'm not sure I'd trust any Federal Reserve Note bearing the signature of Paulson and issued by Bernanke — or any other bank note or demand deposit until Congress enacts the Capital Homestead Act and restores an asset-backed currency.
If Bernanke & Paulson want to urge speed on something, they should very quickly start looking at something we've been proposing for nearly a year now: the Homeowners' Equity Corporation, or "HEC," that we've described ad infinitum on this blog and in a series of letters to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
They'd better hurry and download the material from the CESJ web site, though. There was that couple from Kansas City here the other day . . .
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