Tuesday After

Capital Building - Yahoo Finance

Yesterday evening I heard the news of a major credit rating agency’s downgrade of our national credit worthiness from AAA to AA+. I wish I could feign surprise but that level of dishonesty is not in my moral character. And in a sense that is part of the problem we face; failure as a society to reject the government theft of property from one group of individuals to purchase power through welfarism.   This welfarism is the root cause creating the ever increasing debt; we have a spending problem not a revenue problem. Sadly the media en mass seems to overlook that critical little fact. Even the rating agencies seem to be stuck in the failed Keynesian philosophy of Government control through spending and debt to manage an economy over proven free market solutions that could actually turn this and every other world economy around.

The Fox Business article, which contributed in part to the tag line of this piece focuses on the politics surrounding the recent debt ceiling debate rather than trumpet the real issue the public needs to awaken to.

The heated debate on Capitol Hill and in the halls of the White House stalled repeatedly during months of negotiations, leading S&P to question the “effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policy making.”

MSNBC took a similar tack publishing this article online “US government loses triple-A credit rating S&P says deficit plan doesn’t go far enough; move could raise borrowing costs”. This piece as well focuses on the political rather than root cause of the problem with the addition of a smidgen of fear factor for the bread and butter readers regarding borrowing costs in the tag line. We are further reminded that the rating agencies believe the politicians did not go far enough; read revenue increases (taxes).

“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” S&P said in a statement.

So what are we to take from this? Are tax increases on a few the panaceas they are purported to be by the political aristocracy? This seemed to be the take by such visionaries as Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) on Fox’s Cavuto on Business this morning as well as at least one elderly gentleman at Representative Joe Walsh’s (R-IL) town-hall I attended yesterday in Fox Lake, IL. Both gentlemen hold to the failed mantra that the government has the responsibility to determine fairness through the redistribution of private property. Both, in my opinion, overlook the natural right of individual private property and the lynchpin role it plays as the foundation of all other rights that guarantee liberty. To Congressman Walsh’s credit he soundly defended his vote against the debt limit increase with free market principles supported by a reduction in the size and scope of the national government.

So what is the solution? Do we continue to rob the economic engine of this great nation to further the political ambitions of a political aristocracy or do we look back over nearly a century of failed socialist policy and understand that Liberty and free markets are the solution. Calvin Coolidge recognized this argument when faced with “The Forgotten Depression of 1920”. His solution was somewhat more reasoned when faced with that insatiable beast, Government.