"Can the Federal Government Run Your Business Better Than You Can?"

In my local paper the Associated Press just reported that the President of the United States supports free markets. Astounding. It is actually news that the President of the freest nation on earth feels the need to publicly state the he "supports the free market economic system?" In the story he went on declare that the government has to intervene in the private markets now. . .He wants to "right the ship" and then "let private enterprise do its magic." First of all, I would really like to see where our Congress or President has successfully run a private business. Congress has demonstrated for decades that it is incapable of even operating inside a budget.

Secondly, someone needs to politely remind my President that the main cause of our present economic woe is not the free market. It is centralized government in Washington D.C. intervening and trying to micromanage financial institutions. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act in which the Federal Government began to force private lending institutions to make loans to people who were credit risks. In September of 1999, President Clinton added fuel to the fire by accelerating this process--pressuring banks to loan money to individuals whose credit was not good enough for conventional loans.

Of course, you have to throw in plenty of greedy schemes from Wall Street and people of various incomes who knew they could not afford the house of their dreams, but the current problem arises from people in government who were trying to turn banks into charities.

We all know the results now. The collapse of the housing market. The savings, pensions, retirement funds wiped out. The U.S. and other nations on the edge of an economic meltdown. Government was the source of the problem, not the free market. And now Government thinks it has the skill to solve it by more interference?