Wäre er doch der republikanische Kandidat für das Amt des Präsidenten geworden!
Nun, da der Kongress das unselige Rettungspaket beschlossen hat, erst der Senat und dann das Repäsentantenhaus, bleibt nur noch abzuwarten, ob die kühnen Träume der Ex-Panikmacher wahr werden und dieses gigantische Geschenk an die Wall-Street-Spekulanten tatsächlich ausreicht, um die Krise kurzfristig zu entschärfen (das war es was die Befürworter des „Bailouts“ sich erhofft hatten).
Wahrscheinlich werden die gleichen „Experten“, die noch vor wenigen Tagen vor dem Totalzusammenbruch gewarnt haben, bald beschwören, daß doch alles halb so wild ist, jetzt, wo der Staat sich hat erpressen lassen. Und nichts anderes als Erpressung ist es: Gebt uns 700 Milliarden, oder wir lassen das Wirtschaftssystem gegen die Wand fahren, indem wir unvergleichliche Panik stiften.
Wirtschaft, so wird gern gesagt, sei 90% Psychologie. Dies dürfte noch eine Untertreibung sein, wenn man bedenkt, daß die heutigen Börsenspekulationen nur noch selten von realwirtschaftlichen Tatbeständen beeinflußt werden. Es ist bekannt, daß in einer Herde oft kleinste, nahezu zufällige Bewegungen plötzlich zur totalen Panik der gesamten Herde führen können. Börsenkurse fallen, wenn die SPekulantenherde in Panik gerät, nicht wenn die Wirtschaft schlecht läuft. Da die heutige Finanzmarktordnung so sehr von der Psychologie abhängig ist, grenzt es schon an einen kriminellen Akt, wenn man bewußt Panik schürt, um die Verluste der Spekulanten (und größten Wahlkampfspender natürlich…) durch Staatshandeln auszugleichen.
Ich schließe mit einigen Links zu Bailout-Artikeln von vier fähigen Politikern und einem Ökonomen:
Mike Huckabee (R-AR) – The Fleecing of the American Taxpayer (siehe auch hier):
Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. (…)
The idea of a government bailout in which we’d entrust $700 billion to one man without Congressional oversight or accountability is absurd. My party or not, that is insanity and I believe unconstitutional. (…)
Wall Street has become Las Vegas east, but at least in Vegas, people KNOW they are gambling and they don’t expect the government to cover their losses at the tables. In Wall Street, they do. And the American taxpayer burdens the responsibility.
Ron Paul (R-TX) – Bailouts will lead to rough economic ride:
Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.
Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks. (…)
I am afraid that policymakers today have not learned the lesson that prices must adjust to economic reality. The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay.
Additionally, the government’s actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.
Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.
Mark Sanford (R-SC) – A Bailout for all our bad decisions?:
It seems that each new crisis is met with a new answer from the government. After Hurricane Katrina, the federal government assumed roles traditionally handled by state and local governments. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government federalized 25,000 workers through the Transportation Security Administration. The example of security-focused countries such as Israel, which elects to have that function handled by the private sector, did not matter. Now, our federal government is likely to commit three-quarters of a trillion dollars — more than last year’s Pentagon budget — to a bailout based on what happened in the credit markets last week. (…)
For 200 years, the „business model“ in our country has rested on a simple fact: that while one may reap rewards from taking risks, one should also be prepared to face the consequences of those risks (…)
With that bubble popped, we will now go through a major financial de-leveraging. It will be painful. Yet to preserve what has made this country great, we need to be on guard against Washington offering endless cures to our ills. (…)
We will be told of „temporary“ funds and programs. We should remind our leaders of Ronald Reagan’s words that the closest thing to eternal life is a government program.
Mike Pence (R-IN) – Why I oppose the Bailout:
We now have a deal that promises to bring near-term stability to our financial turmoil, but at what price?
Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. The decision to give the federal government the ability to nationalize almost every bad mortgage in America interrupts this basic truth of our free market economy. (…)
We have fought the good fight. Now we need to finish the race and make sure that posterity and the American people know there were conservatives who opposed the leviathan state in this dark hour.
Jeffrey A. Miron – Bankruptcy, not Bailout, is the answer:
[A] bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This „moral hazard“ generates enormous distortions in an economy’s allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street’s hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents. (…)
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
P.S. Erste Reaktion des Dow Jones nach der Verabschiedung des „Bailouts“: 500 Punkte Absturz in wenigen Stunden! Vielleicht wird es ja morgen besser…
