No to the Federal Bailout of the Financial Industry

This week Congress will approve the Federal Bailout of the Financial Industry proposed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank. Both presidential candidates will vote in favor of it in the Senate. I say vote no. Think Enron, only on a national if not international scale. 1. Congress does not know the problem. 2. This is throwing money at the problem hoping that a solution mysteriously occurs. 3. Unelected people will spend unprecedented sums of U.S. tax money with little oversight. 4. New regulations will not work. It's the nature of this industry to work around them and if needed, move entities outside U.S. jurisdiction. Today's schemes will give way to new unimagined schemes. If left alone the industry will purge itself and devour the troubled organizations, which is what the government bureaucracy would need to attempt but without the incentives nor experience. Eventually these banks would get back to business as usual. With the government getting nervous and ready to bail out the entire industry, why bother. Get that corporate welfare and party on. Why have private banks at all if the government must regulate, insure and bailout? Just let the government bank do it all. If the U.S. was going to precipitously spend $700,000,000,000 to nationalize some companies and bailout the rest it should nationalize the energy industry. That's where it's most needed. AIG has been nationalized so that the government can payoff its debts as if the government was the insurance company for AIG. That's exactly the business of AIG and AIG could not even take care of itself. Why save a company or industry that is so lame and does not provide real service? Why? At its core this situation is very similar to the vote that gave the president the authority to wage war against Iraq. Later, many who voted for it complained that they had been mislead. Too late.