The fact that three or four--or even five, six, or seven--mega-banks have a temporary liquidity problem should not justify the drastic means of a Federal partial take-over of the banks. Hence, due to this knee-jerk reaction, I propose my amendment. If a crisis of confidence can cause such an over-the-top reaction of the Administration (Paulson and Bush), the Congress, a supposedly neutral institution (Bernanke and the other idiots at the Federal Reserve), the news media (partial contributors to the panic but not the sole cause), and our citizens, then we need some kind of control to keep this type of thing from happening. IMHO. This Constitutional amendment would protect Americans from themselves, from being paniced into accepting government ownership of the means of production as a way to keep economic cycles from happening. It won't work anyway.
For starters, let's call them international banks. And, let's ensure we all understand what the institutions actually are: they're huge corporations that handle not just banking, but investments and much, much more. They are hedged in a number of areas that affect more than just our checkbooks. They're wedged into a myriad of activities to include commodities, futures and more. They are owned and run by not just American-based executives, but by people in Abu Dhabi, London and Singapore.
Now, I'm going to take a little tangent.
Recently, Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil companies in his country. He did this because he felt Venezuela's national interests were best served by taking control of those oil companies and having his government manage and execute the daily business plan. I'm not here to debate Mr. Chavez' politics. Merely saying Mr. Chavez felt the assets were valuable enough to the nation, its solvency and its sovereignity that his government took control of them.
So, if our federal government felt it had to put itself in the position to ensure the solvency and sovereignity of the United States by acquiring these banks, isn't that the right thing to do? In other words, we're so concerned about the importance of these banks to bolstering the solvency of our Federal Reserve System that we take control of them, there are probably bigger reasons. So, let's just call it "nationalizing" them and, yes, we can look at this from the perspective of the Tennessee Valley Authority or whatever.
That is to say, if -- IF -- there's the potential to cause great unreversable harm to the United States, and by nationalizing something -- even in the short term -- would protect the U.S. from that harm, shouldn't it be done? It should. That's why we also have things like martial law if we need it. People can get crazy, too.
So, the amendment handcuffs the people -- the thinkers and leaders we trusted with our votes, the ones with degrees from Harvard and Yale and the Chicago School of Economics and MIT and Penn State and all the others -- who we've entrusted to solve the problems. That why we put these people there in the first place. They are smarter than us and can work these problems out while we're stocking shelves at Pier 1, translating contracts for foreign countries or designing a flow valve for ventilation on a passenger aircraft.
This is not a Constitutional crisis. This is a financial crisis and one that speaks of the same leadership fallacies that came with S & Ls, junk bonds and every other BS pyramid scheme that pops up once every 12 years or so. In addition to what I've said previously, a Constitutional amendment handcuffs the very checks and balances created to ensure the United States remains a world leader and (adds corny side note) a beacon of democracy and entrepeneurial dreamers across the globe.
