Recent Articles The First
Financial Panic of the 'New Global Economy'
About US Rep. Thaddeus McCotter Congressman McCotter was elected by his
colleagues in Nov. 2006 to serve as Chairman of the Republican
House Policy Committee, a leadership position once held by Vice
President Dick Cheney. Congressman McCotter is also a member of
the House Financial Services Committee, where he serves on the
Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises
and the Housing and Community Opportunity subcommittees.
The First Financial Panic
of the "New Global Economy” October 4, 2008
Excerpted from
Congressman McCotter’s floor speech regarding the passage of HR1424
We have confronted the first financial panic of the "New Global Economy”
– an economy spawned by the fall of the Berlin Wall; and the precedent
we set will affect our prosperity, liberty and posterity for
generations.
Unconscionably we have rushed to misjudgment and approved a $700 billion
Wall Street Bailout the American people know is intrinsically unfair to
them.
This truth is self-evident in how, initially, an exiting President and
his Treasury Secretary incited a panic amongst our people and the world,
all to compel a compliant Congress to deliver upon this demand:
"Main Street must bail out Wall Street, or how the people will suffer.”
Justly, the People’s House voiced the will of the sovereign people and
refused. Recalcitrant, the administration zealously intensified its
attempt to shift $700 billion dollars worth of consequences from Wall
Street onto Main Street; and pronounced a new ransom dictum:
"No bailout for Wall Street, no tax relief for Main Street, and how the
people will suffer.”
To this demand, the Congress capitulated.
The saddest part of this immorality play is how the people will suffer
regardless; and they know it. Working Americans, who’s well deserved tax
relief must never be predicated upon rewarding others’ misdeeds,
understand this self-described, short-term stabilization bill cannot
claim with certainty to attain its professed intent, let alone solve the
new global economy’s latent structural dysfunctions. Worse, as a
multitude of economists and entrepreneurs prove, this bailout bill will
re-inflate the bubble by $700 billion and, thereby, only delay our day
of economic reckoning.
It cannot be otherwise because the bailout bill’s central economic
construct is patently and grossly unfair to Americans. Succinctly:
Congress will buy "toxic assets” with your money that private investors
won’t buy with their own money. What a deal for you. Therefore, belying
the ludicrous claims, this bailout is designed to save Wall Street, not
Main Street.
It is small wonder Americans rejected this odious proposal; and equally
unfathomable how Congress ultimately approved of it.
In the aftermath, a deeper truth emerges from the ruins.
In setting a new economic precedent during this pregnant moment fraught
with consequence, we also faced a transcendent choice between two
competing visions for our nation’s future: global materialism versus
American traditionalism; "creative destruction” versus "innovative
restoration”; Wall Street versus Main Street.
In the tumultuous transition from our humane American traditions into an
insane global age, we viscerally glean the evolving forces dwarfing our
mortal power to protect the cherished realms of faith, family, community
and country, while in each heart beats the murmur of Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand…
From Congress Americans seek reassurance their representative
institutions remain vibrant and sufficient to shelter and steer our
nation through the amoral global flood-tide’s enveloping chaos.
Congress has answered them.
In voting "yea,” Congress has not solely chosen Wall Street over Main
Street. Congress has chosen the big over the beautiful; the giant over
the gentle; the great over the good.
And this decision now shapes our destiny.
This being the case, we bailout opponents must grudgingly admit a tinge
of envy for its supporters:
Tonight, you will go to sleep praying you are right; we will go to sleep
praying we are wrong; while in each breast the murmur returns.
Now the future
beckons from its ominous shadows, and through the impending gloaming we
can but glimpse how the people will suffer. As breaks that nightmarish
day, let us arise and combine to transcend the insanity of our age;
forge a humane global economy; and restore our American home to a God
blessed land of hope, devotion and dreams.
