Obama Declares War on Greed. Fear Next. Merkel Warns Us All

Won't be long before he goes after "depression", "sadness" and "anger".

His massive spending spree and expansion of government is unprecedented. Much of it is uncalled for. It's perplexing to think a leader would lay blame for all economic ills on "greed" and "Wall Street". Didn't Godman Sachs contribute to his campaign?

But...he is a good orator.

There's been only one leader who has shown any common sense and that's Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.

From Reuters on June 3:

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel has voiced skepticism about leading central banks' approach to tackling the economic crisis, suggesting that they may be storing up more trouble for the years ahead.

Merkel's comments come as the European Central Bank has faced criticism from some analysts for not being as aggressive as either the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of England, both in cutting interest rates and in promoting measures such as bond purchases to boost the money supply.

Merkel appeared to defend the ECB's more conservative instincts and raise questions about the Fed and Bank of England actions. "The independence of the European Central Bank must be preserved and the things that the other central banks are doing now must be reversed," Merkel said in a speech Tuesday, the text of which was posted on the government Web site."

Well, they did go through the Weimar Republic. So they may not a thing or two about all this. Anyway, Merkel is proving to be the only true sensible leader among the G8.

Openmarket.org published this piece about Obama's regulatory obsession:

"The President has just announced proposals for a major overhaul of the financial system. The proposals would force banks to make even MORE risky loans to low-income people. Even liberal newspapers like the Village Voice have admitted that “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers. But Obama will not accept this reality. Instead, he wants to create a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” to rigorously enforce regulations pressuring banks to make loans to low-income borrowers..."

"...The President also wants to give financial regulators the power to seize key companies to prevent real or imagined “systemic risks” to the financial system. These are the same federal regulators who used the AIG bailout to give billions in unnecessary payments to Goldman Sachs, which neither needed nor expected that much money, and forced Freddie Mac to run up $30 billion in losses to bail out deadbeat mortgage borrowers. This is the same federal government that took over Chrysler and General Motors, and then used them to rip off pension funds and taxpayers and enrich the UAW union...."

"The current mortgage crisis came about in large part because of Clinton-era government pressure on lenders to make risky loans in order to “make homeownership more affordable for lower-income Americans and those with a poor credit history...”

"...The liberal Village Voice previously chronicled how Clinton Administration housing secretary Andrew Cuomo helped spawn the mortgage crisis through his pressure on lenders to promote affordable housing and diversity. “Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments..."

In drafting his financial regulation proposals, Obama has turned to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, lawmakers who are among those most culpable in spawning the financial crisis. The New York Times reports that “the plan is largely the product of extensive conversations between senior administration officials and top Democratic lawmakers — primarily Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut.”

"...Banks and mortgage companies have long been under pressure from lawmakers and regulators to give loans to people with bad credit, in order to provide “affordable housing” and promote “diversity.” That played a key role in triggering the mortgage crisis, judging from a story last year in the New York Times ..."

For example, “a high-ranking Democrat telephoned executives and screamed at them to purchase more loans from low-income borrowers, according to a Congressional source.” The executives of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “eventually yielded to those pressures, effectively wagering that if things got too bad, the government would bail them out...”

"...As a Washington Post story shows, the high-risk loans that led to the mortgage crisis were the product of regulatory pressure, not a lack of regulation. In 2004, even after banking officials “warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of that risky lending..."

"...Lenders also face the risk of being sued for discrimination if they fail to make loans to people with bad credit, which often has a racially-disparate impact (proving that such impact is unintentional is costly and difficult, and not always sufficient to avoid liability under antidiscrimination laws). They also risk possible sanctions under the Community Reinvestment Act.

Banks get sued for discrimination no matter what they do. If they don’t make enough loans in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods, they get accused of “redlining,” and are subject to sanctions under politically-correct laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which contributed to the financial crisis by pressuring lenders to make risky mortgage loans."

I ask: When Obama steps up to the mic and tells Americans he will "fix" the problem (first created by government) by adding layers of government and asking politicians who caused the problem in the first place to draft legislation, is he taking voters for fools?

For a guy who ran on "change", he sure is turning out to be typical.

As a friend told me, "Obama is making Bush look a libertarian".