This week has been one that equally affects all Americans, from the wealthiest 1 percent to everyone else. As I am sure many other concerned citizens did, I spent most of my weekend checking up on my portfolio, analyzing my finances and fretting about whether my life savings were secure.
After the collapse of yet another major banking institution, people are right to be concerned for the future. Many of us find ourselves ignorant of the kind of machinery at work. Analysts seem unable to break the crisis down into layman’s terms for the common people to understand. All some of us know is that big businesses are falling, and we want to be sure that we are as far away from the wreckage as possible.
Luckily, the White House has been hard at work to keep the vast majority of us from being engulfed by the carnage. While there are many causes of this recent economic struggle — and I would remind everyone that the fundamentals of our economy do remain strong — there is a bi-partisan agreement that institutions such as American International Group are simply “too big to fail,” and their demise would spell catastrophe for the national economy, if not economies overseas as well.
Many are quick to judge the president’s recent demand of a $700 billion bolster for the financial industry as a “bailout,” or “corporate socialism.” I wish to remind all of my readers of what they no doubt are already aware of: I, as a conservative, despise socialism in all of its forms.
America has stood against the tenets of socialism and steadfastly supported the free market since its inception. What this policy constitutes is a guarantee that the economy will remain on stable ground and that families will be able to access their funds, with a minimum of worry.
Yes, government remains the source of all of our problems. And yes, whenever possible, we must remove regulations on industries such as banking and health care to allow businesses the opportunity to take risks, and reward the consumer with the outcome.
Regardless of the complete disintegration of the housing market and the inability of some major banks to stay out of the red, we must remember that it is essential to remove the regulations that were put in place after the last financial disaster America faced.
We learned our lesson, and now it’s time to take the training wheels off of our financial industry and let it ride free: free of the watchful eye of Uncle Sam and free of accountability.
Matthew Kirchner is a senior English major and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.
