‘Taxpayer Decisions Did Not Create Financial Crisis’

To The Editor:
The election has prompted some of us to believe that another “change is coming.”
Should the elected political leadership perform a cost/performance review of NAFTA, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, OPIC, (the Overseas Private Investment Act) and the benefits of the Federal Reserve Bank, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac?
In 1961, the Overseas Private Investment Act provided loans and investment insurance for American business in foreign countries. Simply put, an American company can open a business have foreign aid provide the necessary infrastructure, (roads, rail and bridges) and energy. If the investment was lost to government takeover or insurrection we, the US taxpayer, replace the lost investment.
From all indications, American companies recognized that they could not lose. Additionally our foreign aid policy would underwrite those cost improvements to the host country with the new construction and improvement to the highways, railroad, and utilities. U.S. factory and job losses hemorrhaged in the late 1970s and early 1980’s. Our elected representatives and organized labor watched as our industrial base evaporated. In my opinion, heavy metal and factory jobs permitted opportunities if someone graduated high school with entry-level positions. Entry-level positions provided opportunities from a mail clerk or floor sweeper to assimilate into management, some achieved to be CEO’s of international companies. This phase became known as the expanding middle class.
Creation of the Federal Reserve Bank was to standardize our paper currency and was value based by gold reserves. After WWII the world was assured that the dollar was as good as gold. Most countries in Europe and Asia had economies and industry was devastated by the war. Our dollar was the only standard as the British pound was devalued after the war. It was the sole purpose of the Fed to control the dollar value preventing inflation and deflation. The dollar gold standard gave way to the Silver Certificate Dollar to the Federal Reserve Note. The financial interpretation of a note is a debt of obligation, thus the term “we accept the dollar for payment in good faith.”
Now the Fed is printing an additional $600 billion to cover government (inflationary) spending. This is in addition to the sale of new bonds, including the auctioning of unpaid mature bonds. Overall two $2 trillion of loans that must be paid, since trillions just became another word, it represents one $1 million, billion. Bottom line, 40 cents of every federal tax dollar goes to interest on our present debt; within eight years, 80 cents of every federal tax dollar will go to the interest payment. The Federal Reserve has never been audited. I cannot wait for the president’s Debt Reduction Committee report next month. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require another $400 plus billion (bailout) to satisfy operating losses.
Your Democratic majority in the Senate and Congress approved measures that required Fannie and Freddie approval of totally bad sub prime mortgages, who sold those as investment bundles to Wall street as Investment grade securities, (because the U.S. government guaranteed them).
Organized labor gave the Democratic Party campaign contributions upwards of $200 million, and Sen. Bob Casey (Pa.) has a bill requesting $150 billion to bail out union pension plans. This past week Congress approved a $45 billion tax cut to GM; just add that to our credit card bill.
The bottom line, taxpayer decisions did not create the financial crisis. Amazingly, every politician running, and those elected, are going to create jobs. Think about it, if government created jobs, soviet Russia would have been an industrial giant.
AL CROSSEN
North Wildwood