Breaking the bank

I tend to try to minimize government interference in the market. I believe that a free market is best for all involved. However, I believe that the government must interfere in some circumstances to maintain a free market. A hundred years ago, anti-trust laws were passed to combat monopolies, who could use their overwhelming market share to defeat market forces and set prices as they pleased. Today we face a different but similar concern: corporations so large that their failure would result in the failure of the entire economy. Such companies wield disproportional power. Their well-being becomes the primary concern of the government, because it is perceived that what is good for Wall Street must be good for the country.

It is clear from the crisis we now face that this is not the case. The government has shaped policy for the benefit of Wall Street for decades, and now we all find ourselves facing the result. Financial institutions have been allowed to focus so much on potential profit that they ignored their obligation to limit the risk to their investors; those institutions are now are failing everywhere, costing taxpayers of today and tomorrow billions just to keep them from total collapse.

We must learn two things from this:

1. What is good for Wall Street is not necessarily what is good for the country.
2. Too big to fail is too big to exist.

Continual bailouts will solve nothing. Only a fundamental restructuring of the entire financial sector will return our economy to sound footing. The US government should cease handing out money to banks without stipulations; this benefits Wall Street, but does nothing for America. Instead, the government should take an approach to banks similar to that taken with GM: demand that the bankers to show that they have a clear plan to return to normal operation before receiving more taxpayer money; or cut the bailouts, forcing the banks into the FDIC equivalent of bankruptcy protection for restructuring, just like any other failing company.

Restructuring would allow the sickest parts of the financial organizations to die, while the healthy parts would quickly return to normal operation with clear credit. The financial underpinnings of the banking system would once again be sound, and lending would resume. Any other course of action is an irresponsible use of taxpayer money. Breaking up the megabanks into smaller entities would then prevent large financial corporations from ever holding such power over the US economy and US policy again. We should never again hear that any single company is "too large to fail".

No one else is saying this because Wall Street doesn't want you to hear it. The financial princes want you to keep believing that they know what is best for the economy, when this crisis is clear and inarguable proof that all they truly know is what is best for themselves. Wall Street has been lying to you, and they're going to continue to lie to you in order to get what they want: a continued stranglehold on the government and economy of this country. Elect me, and I will do everything in my power to break that hold.