Welcome to the Mother of all Mondays.

I got a bad feeling about this, Sundance. 

Today, the market is (finally) reacting to reality, that no amount of government funny money is gonna be able to cheat the hangman on this one. The idea that the government (who by relaxing regulations and subsequently forcing lenders to grant home loans to credit-unworthy borrowers) could fix this by pumping a few billion dollars (which the government didn’t have to begin with) into the system is patently absurd. So the market does what markets do (when allowed to work as they should) – they react to reality and adjust accordingly. For those that think that the descent from 10,000 is a tragedy unheard of in modern times – get a grip. This ain’t over yet. This is simply the end of the beginning. And the more the Feds monkey with things, the worse it’s gonna get, and the longer it will take for the market to recover. In point of fact, you can argue that a DOW of over 10,000 was an illusion, and the current number is much more reflective of reality. When everyone pretends that everyone else has money, it’s no big deal. The minute somebody has the gall to call in a chit, the whole house ‘o cards comes a-tumblin’ down.

The Dems insist it’s the GOP’s fault. The Elephants blame the Donkeys. The truth? It’s a perfect storm of politicians on both sides of the aisle trying to curry favor with voters, greedy lenders willing to exploit the system for their own short-term gains, and clueless people who think “if the bank says I qualify for a home, they must know something I don’t.”  That’s it in a nutshell. Plenty of blame to go around. The real problem here is that We the People allowed ourselves to believe what we wanted to believe, from a group of people (Congress, mostly) who wanted to tell us what we wanted to hear. 

The bailout bill, regardless of what Congress wanted you to believe, was never going to solve anything. It was the Feds’ attempt at softening the inevitable crash landing – a controlled crash, if you will. Did it work? Maybe a little. Probably not much. And the cure will be worse – much worse – than the disease. 

What we have here, is a situation where our elected officials either A) took advantage of the situation years ago, to curry political favor and votes (that would be Clinton, Frank, Dodd, et all), B) tried to warn of the coming crash but were either ineffectual or ignored (Bush, McCain), or C) were completely clueless, and hoped the problem would just go away (the rest of Congress). Is that what we really want in our elected officials? 

The Republic for Which it Stands is supposed to be a representative form of government, where our elected officials act on our behalf, in OUR best intrests. Not theirs. The bunch we have in D.C. at present is doing (in my estimation) a piss-poor job of things. Regardless of how you characterize them: culpable, ineffective, or clueless, it’s one HELL of a way to run a railroad. 

In situations like this, we need to do three things:

1. Figure out what happened so we can avoid doing it again
2. Come up with a plan to make things better as fast as possible
3. Find the guilty and punish them, so they don’t profit from our pain

So far, the media and the government have done a lot of finger-pointing. Few have gotten it right, as to what happened and why. Nobody seems to have a workable plan, and so far, it’s the guilty that are running things in Congress – they’re the ones point the fingers and yelling the loudest, and they’re the ones spending OUR money to fix the problems they caused. 

So what do we do about this? I have a plan. 

• Re-elect NO ONE. If your U.S. Representative is running for reelection VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE. If we have even 70% new faces in the House, we have a shot at fixing this mess. 
• Push Congress to stop fighting and do what needs to be done, without the posturing and shclepping for votes/power
• Repeal the capital gains tax completely
• Cut corporate taxes – they are only passed on to the taxpayers in the form of higher taxes
• Put a freeze on spending – only emergency services and military budgets are exempt – and they get gone over with a fine-tooth comb
• Pass a zero-based budget amendment, to force every dollar to be reallocated each year
• Pass term limits on Congress – two terms and you’re out works for the President…why not Senators and Representatives?
• Pass a line-item veto amendment for the President – no matter who wins, he can keep Congress honest with our wallets
• Repeal our current tax code and replace it with a VAT or a flat tax, with no exceptions