Sitting On Your Hands

As a general proposition, when told by unanimous elites that a particular course of action is urgent and necessary to avoid disaster, there’s a lot to be said for going fishing*. If the entire global economy is so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens, can it, in fact, be saved? 

That’s a quote from Mark Steyn at the Corner.

Sitting on your hands, or going fishing is not a bad idea, sometimes.  Sometimes the more you massage a problem, the worse it get.  So, those thin-skinned GOP representatives, offended by Nancy Pelosi, voted down the bailout package; and, Nancy is offensive.  But, the sun rose this morning.  People shaved and showered and went to work.  And, oh, that record stock market tumble yesterday?  The Dow’s back up 485 points.

One point is going to have to be hammered home is the fact that there is nothing wrong with our free market economy.  The crisis is has its roots in governmental interference in the free market; greatly larded by corruption on steroids.  Once upon a time, the house you lived in came with a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage that required twenty percent down and a monthly payment that did not exceed twenty-five percent of your net monthly income.  

And, in the end, the crisis 700 billion dollars worth of corruption will be solved by the free market.  That is by you and I putting our pants, one leg at a time, and going to work. 

Barney Frank stands between you and ten years of soup kitchens; what a laugh.  Probably the biggest argument in favor of term limits is the egoistic self-regard some of these elected representatives have on the basis of getting a committee chairmanship on the basis of seniority from job-for-life re-elections from safe districts.  Peter Principle (no pun intended)?  Frank, Pelosi, Obama, Dodd, Reid; the pantheon of the Colossi; Masters of the Universe!  

Some how, despite the lack of an urgent rescue, the world survived.  How vital these people really are. De Gaul once  remarked that cemeteries are full of indispensable men.