BuckeyeBlog

The Associated Press reports that Ohio’s state government “has given an additional $1 million to a group of nonprofit organizations that have been able to keep more than 500 Ohio families in their homes by providing no-interest loans.”

In other words, the state has joined Uncle Sam in using wealth redistribution as the solution to the housing crisis; productive and responsible citizens pay into the system, while irresponsible citizens get the disbursements from the system.  Let’s hope Americans don’t have long memories, or we might have a problem locating those productive and responsible citizens the next time we need a scapegoat to bail us out of a crisis.

This article via Glenn Reynolds is a nice one about Freddie and Fannie. I’ve been being warned about this since I started as a newspaper reporter in 2000 for a small business paper. It’s a bit tricky; both that professor that bent my ear and Bainbridge are at risk of the stopped clock scenario; they’re right twice a day, etc. (How’s that for an anachronism).

The real issue Bainbridge touches on at the end: Freddie and Fannie can go to pot, as people have been predicting for 20 years or more they would. What’s really going to happen, though, is that with all the nonsense about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and a list that is literally endless, since our great politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, want to add to it every day, the American government itself is going to be recognized as a fraudulent bankrupt.

It’s not an if. It’s a when.

“They cannot and will not fail,” presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain told reporters.

Great. A fierce competition to see who is the biggest socialist.

Everything can fail. Everything. Especially government, and most especially government that shuts off the private markets. And when governments fail, people are quite likely to die as a result. Everyone is better off when private markets are allowed to function, and the single greatest characteristic of private markets is exactly failure.

Thank God for it. It’s the only thing that allows success.