Gimme, gimme

Come and get it. The trough is open. First, it was the banks and insurance giant AIG. Then it was individual citizens. Now the Big 3 automakers are coming to Congress with their hands out and it appears that municipalities throughout the country will be next. Everybody wants a piece of the bailout pie and you and I are footing the bill.

The problem of course is that we are already spending at a deficit. Between two ongoing wars, the spendthrift nature of recent congresses and the dwindling revenue due to the financial crisis itself there's no way that the government can make up that gap. This is why the government uses credit from foreign nations to prop up its budget. But other nation's are feeling the credit pinch as well. And that brings us to an even more troubling situation.

The United States may lose its 'AAA' rating which will make it more difficult to get loans to pay all of the deficit spending that we are doing. And in the unlikely event that some nation calls in its loans, it will make the Great Depression look like a mild correction. I say that it is unlikely because the debt could not be paid off and trying to seize the assets of the U.S. would cause a catastrophic crisis around the world including the nation or nations that call in that debt. But we live in a world filled with suicide bombers and socialist dictators that would love nothing better than to destroy capitalist nations, especially America. The suicide bombers would have nothing to lose because the believe they answer to a “higher power” than Wall Street. The tin-pot dictators who believe they are the second-coming of Marx aren't bright enough to realize that socialism is no replacement for the free market. Case in point: Hugo Chavez. Since he nationalized most of the Venezuelan economy and put price controls on food, rationing of essentials and economic collapse has been the result. And let's not even get into Cuba.

So there are worries involved in any economic crisis, especially this one. But that's all the more reason to take a measured, judicious approach to the treatment of these crises. Republicans warned that the socialist bailout plan that Congress passed a few months ago would result in more problems than it would solve. Now that the nation knows that its so-called leaders can be cajoled to give handouts, everyone wants a piece of the action.

Props go to Drudge for the article on the 'AAA' threat.

SOURCE: CNBC article