A Perfect Storm

Remember the movie "The Perfect Storm?"

It seems we are in a perfect storm, a financial one. While home prices continue to drop and home equity decreases, local governments struggle with revenue losses, credit for new mortgages drying up, and government quarreling over who gets the credit for the Wall Street bailout, we find ourselves on the verge of a total financial meltdown.

Driven by greed, corruption, an ole boy network, and incapacitated with blindness, Wall Street and our Federal government are reaping what they have sown. Drunk on large commissions and profits (and I am not against gain or profit or earning a commission) Wall Street financial houses, brokers, banks, and the likes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG now hungover from the "Mardi Gras" type atmosphere they have been enjoying over the last few years could walk away with the American taxpayer holding the bag. Follow the money and you will find those who have profited the most from this diseaster.

What has happened to transparency, accountability, principles, and moral character for those on Wall Street, in the halls of Congress, and the Federal bureaucracy? Some of those who are responsible for our current financial catastrophe now want to bailout their friends and drop the results into the laps of the American taxpayer.

Even though it is not expedient and politically correct there is a light shining in the darkness of the backhalls of Congress illuminating free market principles. There are those who are fighting to protect the American taxpayer, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren from financing the bailout and being on the hook for repayment.

I think of all of those who are involved and I have to ask, "Is it worth it?" I am reminded of how easy it is for us humans to fall so quickly from our principles justifying what we say and do. Jesus was talking to His disciples as recorded in Matthew 16:26 and asked, "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?

I need not say any more!