• The U.S. government has loaned, invested or committed $200 billion to nationalize the world's two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• $25 billion for the Big Three auto manufacturers
• $29 billion for Bear Stearns
• $150 billion for AIG and $350 billion for Citigroup
• $300 billion for the Federal Housing Administration Rescue Bill to refinance bad mortgages
• $87 billion to pay back JPMorgan Chase for bad Lehman Brothers trades
• $200 billion in loans to banks under the Fed's Reserve Term Auction Facility (TAF)
• $50 billion to support short-term corporate IOUs held by money market mutual funds
• $500 billion to rescue various credit markets
• $620 billion for industrial nations, including the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, National Bank of Denmark, European Central Bank, Bank of Norway, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of Sweden and the Swiss National Bank
• $120 billion in aid for emerging markets, including the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore
• Trillions to guarantee the FDIC's new, expanded bank deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000
• Plus trillions more for other sweeping guarantees

Grand total: $7.8 trillion and counting

And that excludes a new bailout for Detroit in the works, a new $500 billion stimulus package expected early next year, plus hundreds of billions for at least 19 states running out of money for unemployment benefits.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences – predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics – are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.
• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.
• Then there’s this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind – another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

Article written by Dr. Ron Paul
September 25, 2008

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

What's more he says he is not sure the Federal Reserve has any idea what to do next and that the Congress is totally oblivious to the whole sorry state of affairs – a cocktail of elements he warns puts the middle class of America in serious jeopardy.

"Today we had a lot of financial fireworks in the markets, a lot of things are going on, and I think we are in the middle of something very big." the Congressman stated.

Speaking on the recent collapse and government bailout of several big financial institutions he warned:

"We're talking about big bucks, we're not talking about hundreds of millions or even hundreds of billions, we're talking about trillions of dollars, the obligation is immeasurable."

"The interesting thing is that they (the financial institutions) don't come to the Congress, I mean the Federal Reserve buys them out, they own it. We as tax payers now own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and no one knows how much that will cost. They don't come to the Congress, we don't have appropriations, it's done by secret government, private individuals behind the scenes maneuvering and manipulating and trying to patch things up. While in the meantime, I'm sure there's a few people making a couple of bucks out of this whole thing."

The Congressman highlighted how an economy structured on debt and credit and a financial system based on interventionism and self serving moral hazard has led to gross devaluation of the dollar and ultimately lies at the root of the current financial meltdown.

"Our problems come first of all from the Federal Reserve. It is a monopoly and it controls interest rates artificially low, causes people to make mistakes, that's the basic source. But then on top of that in the Housing market we had the community reinvestment act which told investors that they had to loan to risky borrowers, and that was a risky complication. HUD contributes to this, FDIC contributes, it's called moral hazard, everything that we have done over here creates moral hazard, that is we assure people or assume that we will take care of everybody, just go out and create the risk, it is the opposite of the market place." Paul stated.

"You can't create money like we're doing in order to support the dollar, because ultimately it hurts the dollar and everything we do in Washington today whether its on the appropriations side, whether it's what the Fed is doing, buying up America, it's all putting pressure on the dollar. One of these days we're just going to have to wake up and say that we need to liquidate debt. This is malinvestment." he urged.

The Congressman then slammed those who have blamed the crisis on failures of the free market:

"And then they have people come along and say 'see, this is the failure of capitalism', this has nothing to do with capitalism, this is something that started off as interventionism and us being too involved in the economy for the benefit of special interests. But now it is being socialized out in the open."

"The end of this comes when people reject the dollar and I think we're getting awfully close to this." Paul stated echoing comments from leading investors such as Jim Rogers, who predicted Monday that the dollar would soon lose its world reserve status.

"When you see the movement in the markets that we have today, you know that there are serious problems out there and Congress basically are oblivious, they have no idea what's going on." Paul continued.

"As a matter of fact I'm not even sure the Federal Reserve has any idea what to do about this. They've been manipulating and maneuvering for their own benefit over the years but eventually the market wins out."

The Congressman's comments were echoed today by reports indicating that the Congress cannot agree on any form of action and is likely to simply adjourn and "get out of the way".

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that "no one knows what to do".

In a stark warning, Ron Paul stressed that the longer the value of the dollar is allowed to depreciate, the greater the risk becomes for the majority of Americans:

"The reason this is so important is that if you care about people in a humanitarian sense, what you want to do is protect the value of the money. Just think of the third world nations when they have total run away inflation, the middle class gets wiped out. And what we are seeing today is the middle class being jeopardized by this type of system that we have, unlimited spending, unlimited debt, unlimited creation of new credit."

"So it's time that we wake up… The answers are in the free market, sound money and our Constitution." Paul concluded.

Watch the full address by the Congressman:

Article written by Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Sept 18, 2008