No Bailouts: Letter to Congress

I am opposed to government intervention in the free market. The market should be allowed to set prices. This action will artificially inflate housing prices and delay the economic recovery further. If housing prices were allowed to fall, then investors, using the free market, would buy the distressed property rather than government doing so.



This bailout is a repetition of the mistaken Hoover/Roosevelt policies of the 1930's and 1940's. These failed policies, including the welfare state, and government intervention in the free markets are a large part of what got us into this mess in the first place.



The Federal Reserve, if you read the Austrian Economists, creates boom and bust cycles, creates inflation, lowers real wages, and depends on a debt-centered economy in order to function. We should eliminate the Federal Reserve and return to a gold backed currency.



Additionally, we must end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and adhere to the Constitution. Congress should vote to declare war if the military is to be committed in the future.



Congress must not "delegate" its legitimate Constitutional duties to the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. This is not acceptable. Congress should do its job. Part of its job requires that our elected representatives have a clear understanding of economics. Not just that they receive the opinions from so-called experts, but that they are immersed in economic theory and understand that each new law and regulation that is passed has multiple consequences. Congress has to consider not only the immediate, near-term consequences of its actions, but also the long-term consequences.



Liberty is indivisible. It consists of both individual and economic liberty. Liberty withers and dies when either, or both, economic or individual liberty is assaulted.



Congress has seen fit to assault both our individual liberties - through the Patriot Act, FISA, telecom immunity, elimination of Posse Comitatus,etc. - and our economic liberties through government intervention in the free markets, undue taxation and regulation, the domination of special interests over the public interest, deficit spending, devaluation of the dollar, harmful monetary policy, and the current series of bailouts to those interests it receives donations and other favors from.



None of this is acceptable to me and I will no longer tolerate this situation. I intend to use the power of the vote, the power of recall election, the power of the bully pulpit or any other legitimate action necessary to oppose the immoral, unconstitutional and illegitimate actions.



I think it wise for Congress and the Executive to consider the source of their power and legitimacy. The actions of this current Congress and Executive do not conform either to our founding documents - the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution - nor to the expressed will of the people.



The true crisis is not a financial crisis, but a crisis of constitutionality and legitimacy. Until you understand and act on this constitutional crisis you cannot hope to resolve the problems facing our nation.



Sincerely,



Terry Kinder