Giving Credit Where No Credit is Due

In his news conference this day, President Obama reiterates what has been said by almost every economist for the past several months: that a stimulus package must be enacted that will provide banks with enough liquidity, i.e. enough of a cash cushion, that the banks will somehow no longer be afraid to loan companies money; and that the companies will, by borrowing the money from the banks, be able to buy raw materials for manufacturing, or to loan money to consumers to buy cars, etc., or to refrain from laying off further workers. The assumption is that, with this infusion of loaned money, American companies will, "again", become successful engines of commerce.
The assumption that most of us taxpayers have always made about businesses, at least about good successful businesses, is that a successful business did not have to borrow money daily or weekly in order to stay in business, any more than a financially successful person had to go daily or weekly to the loan shark and borrow money against his next paycheck. Many of us were not particularly financially savvy , but, learned to pay off credit card balances instead of using the cards as consumer loans. While we understood that a business might, for instance, need to borrow money to make a large capital purchase, as we might, to buy a house, we assumed that businesses were wiser than us taxpayers, and thus that surely a good business, SAVED, enough money to meet day-to-day operating expenses. Yet we are now presented with the spectacle of most businesses in our country operating hand- to-mouth, paycheck-to paycheck, and we are being told by the economic gurus, that we taxpayers should tacitly approve and support businesses operating in a way that we have been told goes against sound financial principles. President Obama and the gurus want the banks not to be afraid to loan businesses money. Yet it seems that the banks, and we, should properly be terrified.

Out of the Garden

My childhood was idyllic, joyful and fanciful. I grew up on a farm. My grandfather had a large farm that he farmed with tractors and mules. As a boy , I got to farm with both. He had a sawmill and a cotton gin and I got to work and play at both. My brother and I had horses to ride. We had cows and pigs to take care of, barns to climb in, roofs to climb on,wagons to ride in, big piles of cotton to dive into. My grandfather built us gym toys and other large outdoor toys to play on. The centerpiece of these toys was a slide built out of wood and tin. It didn't slide very well ,but it was really high, and at the top of the slide was a large platform, beside a tree. The platform was ideal for a young boy to lie on and read comic books: Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman. If you got tired of lying on the platform you could just climb over in the tree. Oh, there were chinks in the garden wall, intimations that the garden wouldn't last forever, such as pretend girlfriends, sneaked cigarettes, fights at school, and such, but nothing truly portentious.
But one night when I was fourteen years old, I sat in the school band hall at band practice. From the left side of the room, I looked at Judy Bedford with her french horn in the center of the room, and she looked at me, smiled, and blushed. I had an awareness of her, and of myself, that I had never had before. We "made eyes" at each other for the rest of band practice that night. I had no way of knowing then that I was being cast out of the Garden forever that night, as surely and irrevocably as Adam. And I have since come to realize that every one of us is just as inevitably cast out of the garden, to live with joy and sorrow, ecstasy and pain, and the inevitability of change and the sure knowledge of death, but just as with that fourteen year old, we would, and could, have it no other way.

Tax Crook Tom Daschle

So now we find that former senator, and world-citizen Tom Daschle, like fellow-crook Tim Geithner, did not pay $140,000 in taxes until he knew he was to be vetted by congress. Then he "discovered" his mistake and paid up. The inescapable fact, glaringly visible to everyone, including us americans, is that this incredibly arrogant, and gratuitously mean, man would never have paid these taxes otherwise. Maybe he, like fellow Universe-Master Geithner, did not know about owing them. How come that is no excuse for us others, us americans? President Obama says that, like Geithner, this failure to pay is no obstacle to Daschle becoming Health and Human Services Secretary. Then what would be an obstacle?
It seems that Obama feels he can perform an immaculate conception, wipe the embryo clean, for people that were not properly vetted by him in the first place, simply by pronouncing his blessing on them.
Our biggest fear, that Obama would believe his incredibly fawning press, seems to be coming true.