In a survey for the Prince William Family Alliance, Cathy Crabill refused to oppose bank bailouts.
You read that right, the woman who would like us all to believe that Rob Wittman isn’t conservative enough answered thusly on the PWFA survey (her elaboration is in red; h/t to Tim Watson, who emailed this to me):
9. Authorize regulatory agencies to provide relief to banks in exchange for bank stock.
Support __________ Oppose _____________ Undecided _____X_______
Don’t know enough about this (the ramifications).
Don’t know the ramifications? Seriously? This woman wants to represent me in Congress?
True defenders of limited government ripped the 2008 bank bailout (a.k.a. TARP) from the start. We knew it would fail to solve the problem, while greatly improving the power of the federal government in our economy.
Yet almost two years after it happened, Cathy Crabill can’t bring herself to oppose this.
Well, Rob Wittman could. He understood the ramifications and opposed it not once, but twice.
If you, like me, are in the 1st District, remember this: Cathy Crabill, the supposed champion of limited government, does not oppose bank bailouts. Only one candidate on the ballot on June 8 opposes bank bailouts – Rob Wittman.
Please remember this the next time Ms. Crabill or any of her supporters claim that Congressman Wittman isn’t conservative enough, and please vote for the only candidate who opposes bailouts - Rob Wittman.
Filed under: 2010 Elections, Catherine Crabill, Economics, Government Waste, National Politics, Northern Neck Politics, Republican Party of Virginia, Republicans, Rob Wittman, Spending, Virginia Politics
[...] Cross-posted to VV [...]
Wow…just…wow…
If you knew ANYTHING about how precarious the entire world’s economy was in lat 2008, you would say the TARP plan was genious. And if you look at the billions the taxpayers MADE on their investment, you’d say it was a brilliant.
I don’t know Crabhill or Wittman, but I will tell you that Wittman obviously doesn’t know the whole story – or refuses to admit it for fear of reprisals from likeminded knuckleheads.
Lloyd,
I’m sorry you were caught in the mass hysteria that was the panic of the fall of 2008. I wasn’t. I knew better.
TARP misdiagnosed the problem, provided the wrong initial solution, and empowered the Treasury Secretary to make things worse (which he did).
There were many people who didn’t succumb to the panic. I’m glad my Congressman was one of them, and I’d like to see him remain my Congressman for a while longer.
I’ve seen your blog. It’s not bad, but like most moderate Republicans, you focus to much on what *sounds* reasonable, rather than what *is* reasonable.
Poor fellow.
[...] regulatory agencies to provide relief to banks in exchange for bank stock”, she checked the “Undecided” box and wrote the following as a comment: “Don’t kno…Uh-huh, she doesn’t know enough about this. TARP was almost two years ago, and she still [...]
[...] regulatory agencies to provide relief to banks in exchange for bank stock”, she checked the “Undecided” box and wrote the following as a comment: “Don’t kno…Uh-huh, she doesn’t know enough about this. TARP was almost two years ago, and she still [...]
DJ,
I’m interested in just what experience you had that gave you this great insight. I worked it from the inside. Had TARP not injected some stability into the American banking system bank after bank would have failed. The stock market would have collapsed. Millions more would be out of work and we’d be much deeper into this depression that we are now.
I’m a fan of the free market, but the consequence of a completely free market is huge ups and downs in the economic cycle – like the Great Depression. Are you saying that you’d rather have another Great Depression just for the sake of being able to claim (incorrectly) that the government is not involved in our economy?
P.S. There’s nothing “moderate” about me. I’m just right.
@Lloyd, I do believe it was stimulus projects and ideas like TARP, that lead to the great depression and made it last longer.
As I recall, the TARP bill had at least $150 billion in wasteful earmark spending.
I’ve been studying economics my entire adult life. Government interventions into the economy cause abnormalities in a free market. These abnormalities are the distortions the cause the wild swings that are cloaked in the term “business cycle”.
Markets by nature are stable. Recessions are not part of a normal business cycle as the corporate media would leed you to believe. A recession or depression is when market forces say enough is enough and start applying force to move back to equilibrium on no uncertain terms. Market interventions can sometimes increase stability in the short term, but cause corrections eventually (think recession).
Whether we are talking about preferential tax treatment or direct stimulus (both corporate and social welfare), the idea is the same. Create short term stability at the expense of future stability for political and financial gain. There are winners and losers. In this game a ruling elite are the net winners and the rest of us are the net losers. Speculation, not investment, becomes the name of the get rich quick game. Create anomalies and use the volatility to extract other people’s wealth (think 401k) then blame the extraction on “the market.”
The truth is none us have ever experienced a truly free market in our life times. I don’t care how old you are. All we know is what we have had and it is anything but free.
I have to agree with Garrett. Most have convinced themselves that letting the banks fail is a bad thing. I’m not so sure about that. One thing is for sure it has been a wake up call for patriots who value indentured freedom.
Most of you don’t understand what you have been looking at. What you have just witnessed is the lenders loosing control of their price support mechanism. This mechanism drives the price of housing up for their benefit away from the equilibrium price to the bank profit maximizing price. Without their price supports the prices quickly returned to what the equilibrium price would have been without them. Look at how substatancial the gap was.
How much more of your hard earned wealth could you have saved for retirement had housing prices been maintain over your lifetime at a real equilibrium price. How much more competitive would the American worker be in the world market today? How many more people could afford to own at the equilibrium price without the need of government intervention? The truth be told, you would all be better off without indentured servant contracts.
You what proof of banking price manipulation? Go to an area hard hit and look at the shadow inventory of homes. The shadow inventory is the vacant houses that the banks are holding and not putting on the market. The inventory is huge and government subsidized. The banks are controlling the supply of houses to reestablish price supports.
The million dollar question is not should the tax payer bail them out? It is how did they convince you that bailing them out was in your best interest? If you don’t mind, I’m going to go turn on the tube and wallow in blissful ignorance now.
I can’t stand when people say, “You don’t understand” as True Conservative does above. The fact of the matter is, credit markets in fall of 2008 had seized up entirely. Banks weren’t even lending to each other, and without some kind of implicit, if not explicit, guarantee from the government, virtually all banks would have been out of business. Of course, I don’t expect you to be able to get into the LIBOR issues because, frankly, I don’t think YOU understand the issue one bit. It’s always easy to talk in generalities and theory, but the fact of the matter is that the entire credit industry was on the brink. You can quibble about the degree of government involvment (like whether institutions like Bear Sterns and others should have been allowed to fail), but without government action no businesses, big or small, would have been able to continue long because they wouldn’t have access to credit.
And, Garrett, I don’t know where you are coming from in saying that TARP like projects LEAD to the Great Depression. Like what?!! In fact, it was bank failures and the resulitng the inablity for businesses to get credit (as I described above, and which was on the minds of the feds as they rolled out TARP), that threw the American economy in 1929 into the tailspin.
All that said, there still has been a bloodletting, which is a good thing. Since the beginning of 2009, 218 banks have failed at a cost to the FDIC insurance fund of more than $30 billion. Major banks, too, have failed so it hasn’t been a “prop them up at all costs” approach.
Bottom line is that conservatives, myself included, don’t like the fact that there has been a bail out, but conservatives who knew the issue (including Bush and Paulson) reasonably and correctly ybelieved massive short-term government intervention was the only way.
Don’t forget, either, that the taxpayers MADE money on their investment in the TARP banks.
C’mon guys! You waited until my KD trip with the little guy to start this argument?
Lloyd, if you really think Henry Paulsen is a conservative, you know absolutely nothing about politics, but since this discussion is about economics, I’ll let that pass.
The economy of 1929 was stronger than you think. Most believed by 1931 that we had turned the corner. Then Herbert Hoover imposed massive tax increases and new taxes (including a tax on writing checks) that knocked the economy into the abyss. Oh, and the money supply contracting by a third from 1930 to 1935 didn’t help.
As for TARP and the banks, your “insider” card reminds me of the old Russian proverb “no one lies like an eyewitness.” More to the point, TARP misdiagnosed the problem (mark-to-market forced banks to incorporate false losses into their balance sheets, making them look worse than they were), empowered Paulsen to make it worse, which he did by forcing healthy banks to take the $$ at gunpoint to hide who was sick – and thus made everyone (including you, apparently) think things were worse off then they really were. The result, as you should know, greatly devalued the psychological effects of the rescue (LIBOR, as I recall, stubbornly refused to drop in grateful reaction for months).
Finally, your use of the argument about taxpayers making money on this underscores your complete lack of understanding about the importance of this mistake. Government involvement in the private sector on this massive scale is not something that can be blithely dismissed by saying, “hey, we made money.” The government is not a business, and never will be.
In short, your a finance guy who got caught in the panic. I’m an economics guy who saw, and still sees, the larger picture.
I wasn’t caught in the panic. Justified or not, the market panic was there and real, and that’s what affects the economy. Look at the wild daily swings on the Dow which are driven by just that. And your simply wrong on the LIBOR and most of your assertions as to timng.
I will agree with you that there is some damage done by the government apparently showing it could become a market participant. However, that damage is far outweighed by the absolute collapse it avoided.
As to the Depression, the stock market crashed in 1929 and we were no where near out of it by 1931. Bank failures in 1929 and 1930 – and resulting lack of credit and confidence in banks – is what really led to the collapse of the system. In other words, it was excalty the type of “panic ” that you say I just don’t understand.
[...] Cathy Crabill doesn’t oppose bank bailouts Posted on May 29, 2010 by D.J. McGuire [...]
The neo-cons were not, are not, and will never be conservatives. In addition, Papa Bush’s new world order is down right un-American. Moving us to a new world government with no constitutional protections is the complete opposite of conserving our freedoms and the freedoms of our children.
As for Paulsen’s questionable behavior, I did my analysis of that situation by looking at the end results of his actions taking his personal allegiances and self interests into account. He forced his friends at healthy banks to take money they didn’t need but could then use to buy up weakened competitors at fire sale prices further condensing banking power under fewer roofs. My nose is starting to smell premeditation. Than he torpedoes his arch rival Lehman Brothers and bails out his old firm Goldman Sachs. Sachs also comes out of this mess with a larger market share with their biggest rival gone. My nose is starting to smell typical capitalist predatory aggression to go with the premeditation. We will never know what Paulsen’s true intentions were but judging from the end results, if it was a plan it was a brilliant one brilliantly executed.
As for all the government intervention in the economy, most of the moneys were spent in a less then optimal manor. Stimulating always creates a short term gain with a long term repercussions. Judging from how the stimulus package was structured and eventually implemented one has to wonder how beneficial it actually was to the over all economy. Everything seems to have run it course naturally with some questionable results form massive corporate welfare that stimulated only a few intended beneficiaries. Washington business as usual if you ask me with a great excuse to go on yet another spending binge.
If it was as bad as Lloyd believes it was, we sure handled it wrong. The people who stood to loose the most through the miracle of corporate welfare ended up gaining the most and the American tax slave was left with the bill. In doing so we created an incentive to do this sort of thing again. The sociopath finance majors are already back it again offering no qualifications 12% 30 year loan with 12 points. They have learned nothing. What ever happened to usury laws? Oh yea, bribes/campaign contributions guarantee an exception to the rule.
Lloyd, I do feel for your labor issue. Like I feel for the millions who have lost there jobs because of the excesses of your industry.
Reasonable business lending helps to create jobs. Consumer credit creates indentured servants and inflated prices. It allows the indentured to purchase things they couldn’t otherwise buy and probably shouldn’t be buying. At best in moderation it can provide some short term economic stimulus with long term repercussions. Unfortunately, your industry doesn’t do anything in moderation. It is always keeps the petal to the metal with a competitive vigor. Excessive profits always breed ruinous competition.
The lenders stopped lending for many reasons. The most important one doesn’t get any air time in the corporate media. The lending industry over fished the fishing grounds. They ran out the pool of viable borrowers. This is why many stopped lending. Like fishermen who bring about their own demise through greedy behavior the lenders did the same. The fishermen go under, but banks get preferential treatment. I don’t buy the idea that slavers are an absolute necessity to a thriving economy. They are an absolute necessity to their own personal economies, but the rest of the country could do with less.
In spite of what you may think, consumer lending is not a noble business. It is trafficking in human bondage. Those nocuous pieces of paper that get shuffled around Wall Street are the indentured freedom of human beings. Not something to be treated lightly and certainly not with reckless abandonment.
Consumer lending is “trafficking in human bondage?” Really?
You’ve lost all credibility with me, and I really dont’ have the time or desire to debate crazies.
Apologies for the term “crazies.” Please substitute “idealogues who ignore the realities of life and economics.”
I prefer the term realist and I’m sorry if my professional analysis offended your sensibilities.
Properly defining a problem is the first step to fixing it and I pride myself on staying focused on the logic of subject rather than to the object of thought.