Quote of the Day: "Utopia is not one of the options." -- David Bergland, Author, DC Downsizer

Subject: Another bailout, more corporate welfare

Here comes yet another bailout, and more corporate welfare. The Obama administration wants to use your tax money to bribe banks to renegotiate second mortgages. Projected price tag: $50 billion. 

This may benefit some banks, and some people behind on their payments, but should the rest of us have to pay for it?

Banks already have a strong financial incentive to renegotiate rather than foreclose on delinquent mortgages. If banks don't renegotiate a mortgage you can bet that's because it makes more financial sense to foreclose. But . . .

Politicians always assume they know better. They think they know the best way to run . . .

* A car company
* An insurance company
* A medical practice
* A bank
* Everything

There isn't an area of human life where politicians don't assume they know better than the people who actually work in that area.

We don't need to believe the Utopian fantasy that business leaders are without error. But it's even more Utopian to assume that politicians are competent to prevent such errors, or even to correct them after the fact. In fact . . .

The assumption should be that politicians are MORE prone to error than anyone else, because . . .

* They make judgements on more subjects than anyone could possibly master
* These judgements impact everyone
* They have little incentive to get it right

This last point is especially important because . . .

* They generally pay no price for what they get wrong
* Usually, the next crisis (caused by their policy) will be used to justify giving them still more power!

So there are two issues here, the moral and the practical.

* It isn't moral for politicians to force you to pay for other people's mistakes
* It isn't practical for politicians to decide when mortgages should be renegotiated and when they should be foreclosed

Please instruct your Congressional employees to resist the $50 billion give-away program for second mortgages. You can send your message using our Educate the Powerful System.

Ask your friends to do the same, and Digg the blog version of this message on our website so more people will see it.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army (we'll report the April growth numbers in tomorrow's message).

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.