The American Political Cycle

Obama is now blaming hedge funds and other Chrysler bond holders, which include the University of Kentucky, Kraft Foods’ retirement fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, pension funds, and teachers’ credit unions, according to CBS News. Even though they are contractually, legally, first in line for the remaining assets of Chrysler, Obama has threatened them with ruination unless they take his deal which rewards most of their money to the UAW, a major Democratic campaign contributor.

It is not the responsibility of hedge funds and their ilk to safeguard the American financial system. Those guys always do their best to figure out a way to make money without risk. That is the ideal toward which they strive, and so they should.

It is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the financial committees in Congress, and professional and academic economists to be in the safeguarding business, and they have all failed miserably, Democrats and Republicans alike. The reason they all failed is because it felt so good that nobody, including the electorate, wanted it to stop.

My prediction is that Obama and company are in the process of screwing it up big time. The way the American political cycle works is nobody likes Republicans because they are like your Dad, always preaching self reliance, hard work, thrift, stiff upper lip, and all that crap. The Democrats are popular because they promise to take care of us and make everything groovy for free. But the Democrats are wrong about everything, so whenever they get in power, they screw everything up and then we vote for Republicans again, reluctantly, until we forget how badly the Democrats screwed up the last time.