Crash?, Correction?, Congress?

Just what the tumultuous financial markets needed, a major record-level drop in the market on one afternoon from either a human or a computer error, or from both combined, allowing high-speed trading systems to drive the market irrationally and beyond human control and understanding. Congress has declared that they will investigate the causes and failures that allowed this to happen with the intention of making sure that the economy is not put in jeopardy from such events in the future. This demonstrates three aspects of Congress that should give us all pause.

First, Congress has demonstrated its keen understanding and insight into many areas in the past where they have successfully established programs and regulatory bodies that have achieved the successes that they envisioned. Recent examples include, but are not limited to, the Market melt-down of 2008 with its SEC oversight, the Gulf Oil spill in the last couple of weeks and the environmental safeguards required, the flu vaccine production availability last winter delivered by the CDC, the US-Mexico border fence wrought by the Homeland Security agency, the funding the Iran and Afghanistan war efforts as off-budget items to keep their unaffordability from impacting the domestic economy, and the raging forest fires from a couple summers back from our fire prevention initiatives. As these and other events like them show, Congress is certainly capable of crafting the right policies and regulatory focuses to protect the American people from unwise and reckless activities. Congress is prepared to guide the American public toward productive and prudent ventures that use their taxes without waste and corruption. This first attribute of Congress is one of the major reasons why the average American citizen holds our national legislators with such high regard and respect. These are people that we can depend upon to look out for our interests, without fear that Congress will act foolishly by adhering to some Party principle that has no basis in fact nor any connection to reality. These are men and women who are among the best and brightest that our society is able to produce. Any failures that have come about because of their legislative activities are beyond the ability of anyone to have perceived or comprehended in advance those failures.

Second, there is the implication that Congress thinks of itself as a body that can dictate the results that will occur simply because Congress has decreed that this is and will be the intended result; something akin to the Pharaoh’s “So it is written, so it shall be”. This can range from the efforts that have insisted that ‘tax breaks’ will restore the financial foundation of the nation without any recognition of or regard for the fiscally unsustainable Social Security system and its ilk that will not only not be restored by tax-breaks but which are more likely to terminate sooner. There are the contra-groups in Congress who will not raise taxes but who create fees, fines, assessments, licenses, sales of public resources, and other funds collection mechanisms so that they can create the particular legislative program they seek without having to man/woman-up to the fact that they just raised your taxes. Or worse, there are the Congressional leaders who will create legislative imperatives (“unfunded mandates) that must be undertaken, but will not account for nor provide the funding resources essential to their execution. It is from this hubris in their infallibility that Congress concocts their schemes to make the ‘perfect world’ that their vision foretells.

Third, Congress is perfectly suited to undertake the task of correcting the defects in many of our social, economic, business, environmental, and public areas. As a group they can be counted upon to weigh the facts carefully, to never follow the Party line above their own best judgment or the interests of their constituency, to be honest with the public purse, to be role-model and law-abiding citizens, and to be true state-men/women who can find common cause with their peers in Congress of any Party able to form coalitions that can deliver to the needs of the country. We would never see our Congressional representatives engaged in constant and unabated partisan bickering and snipping. Seeking with a one-minded purpose any tactic or strategy whose sole purpose is to thwart the possibility of accomplishing anything. Such illustrious members of Congress would not spend their days in destructive partisan posturing, nor would they allow serious and vital issues to become political footballs. We would never see efforts on: Health Care Reform, Financial Reform, Judicial appointments, immigration reform, economic stimulus packages, or other national issues dealt with as nothing more important than a campaign funding raising event for special interest lobbying groups.

And it is with these characteristics and more that Congress is preparing to go into battle to insure that the public will be protected from whatever caused the ‘thing’ that happened this week with the stock markets. Congress will see to it that sanity, reason and wisdom are brought to bear upon Wall Street and their methods. Who better to lead the charge than the clueless!