Watching Congress Make Unbelieveable Decisions

Today, after watching Congress question Kashkari (from Treasury), I am amazed that we continue to elect the quality of people we do to Congress. They either failed all their finance and economic courses in school (or did not take them) or maybe they are so eaten up with partisan politics that they do not care.

For several weeks now, I have listened to people talk about how lowering the discount rate or capital injection or ????? has not worked. Of course it has not worked. If you read my 9/29 blog on how we got in this mess, you know that those things don't fix millions of people's horrible financial decisions over the last 8ish years. When people buy homes they cannot afford, cars that they cannot pay for, make credit card charges that they cannot pay off at the end of the month and then take out home equity loans to do more of the same, why do we think Congress can fix the leveraged problem. If you watch the financial shows and read the financial papers, you continually hear that we have to deleverage (what did I say on the 9/29 blog). Congress cannot get consumers who made ridiculous decisions deleveraged. But, of course, Congress has to act like they are doing something and all they really do is make themselves look ridiculous or confirm that they failed their finance courses.

Everyone, including Congress, is looking for someone to blame and we (the consumers) made all those bad decisions on our own. No one put a gun to our head and said you must make all these stupid decisions. Over and over again you can hear that for a number of years we lived beyond our means and have been in a false economy. Until we pay off the debt and save money and learn to make good financial decisions, nothing will change.

I am sitting here now listening to analysts talk about the housing problem being the root and say that has not been fixed. You cannot enact some program and fix those decisions. Do you know that since Spring the redefault rate on mortgages that have been helped is between 40-45%? If people are not accountable for their actions, they never learn to make the right decisions.

I am sorry for all the negative comments above, but for several weeks I have listened to one ridiculous argument after another and I had to say something.