A Contrived Crisis? - You Decide

Through a series of supposedly random but arguably deliberate chain of events, America is poised to jettison 220 years of a free market system called capitalism, in favor of the tried and failed system of socialism. This writer, and others, are now starting to question how we reached this point.

Last summer, as McCain and Obama were in the midst of their campaigns to capture the presidency, a series of events dramatically changed the focus of the campaign from Iraq to the economy. From that point on, Obama took the lead and eventually won the presidency.    June 26, 2008: Democrat Chuck Schumer leaked a memo questioning the solvency of IndyMac bank. This memo precipitated a run on IndyMac which led to its failure. Federal regulators pointedly cited U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in explaining the bank's failure. "The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York."

This event, coupled with the Lehman Brothers collapse in September, marked the beginning of the current economic meltdown and provided the ammunition for massive government intervention in the private market.
July 12, 2008: The federal government takes control of the $32 billion IndyMac Bank. *
Sept. 6, 2008: Fannie Mae begins its downward spiral, which will end with a crash in November. This crash was avoidable, as the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were identified in June of 2006, when 15 Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee introduced legislation to address the problem. Democrats, led by Barney Frank, killed the reform efforts.   Sept. 15, 2008: Obama and McCain are virtually tied in their race for the presidency. Out of no-where, in the space of less than 2 hours, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the U.S. to the tune of $550 billion. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said that if authorities had not closed the banks, $5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn from US banks, which would have caused the collapse of the US  within 24 hours.

This seminal event marked the ascendancy of Obama's candidacy, and eventually resulted in his election as president.

Fast forward to this week. The markets reacted to Obama's proposal to bail-out mortgages and Senator Christopher Dodd's talk of nationalizing banks by reaching 11-year lows.

Obama continues to stoke the fears of imminent crisis, actually using the word 'crisis' a total of 26 times in one speech.

Enter George Soros. The infamous one-worlder, billionaire George Soros adds his voice to the media doomsayers by opining that the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of near-term resolution to the crisis. 

Soros said the turbulence is more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He may be right. The series of 'inadvertent errors', deliberate obstruction, political shenanigans, behind the scenes manipulation of the money markets and non-stop calls for immediate infusions of taxpayer cash have brought the U.S. to its knees.

With one voice, politicians, economists and 'experts' agree by unspoken consensus  that government is the only solution. No one points out the fact that every single step taken so far by the government has exacerbated the problem, effectively bringing America one step closer to centralized government control. Which, coincidentally, Obama favors.

I am not an economist. But I will challenge any expert to dispute the fact that if President Obama took to the airwaves tomorrow and announced the Bush tax cuts would be extended and a capital gains tax cut was under consideration, the markets would immediately turn around.

That no-one is proposing this common sense solution is alarming. That no free market solutions are even under consideration is more alarming. That no-one is questioning who was responsible for the Sept. 15 run on money market accounts, or why the media was silent on it, lends credence to the possibility that our current economic crisis might not have been the result of a series of random events.

The economic meltdown is undoubtedly responsible for Obama becoming president. It is also responsible for the current consideration of socialistic solutions, if not outright socialism. Without a doubt, this crisis has strengthened the Democratic party. Yet to connect the dots and suggest that this crisis isn't a result of capitalsm gone bad risks branding this author with the title of paranoid conspiracist.

Color me paranoid. Was this current crisis manufactured? I don't know. Does the possibility exist? You decide.


* Six months later, Jan 2, 2009, a seven-member group of investors agreed to buy the remnants of failed lender IndyMac for $13.9 billion. Other investors included a fund controlled by billionaire George Soros' Fund Management.