Let the differences begin. Senator John McCain stepped out of the campaign box and said he opposes vigorous governmental bailout action for solving the mortgage and banking crisis. On the other hand, his opponents, Senators Obama and Clinton, want to bring in the federal money truck and douse the crisis with our tax dollars.

Liberal thought demands the best way to extinguish the irresponsible inaction of government and faulty deeds of the private sector is to throw money at it. Oh, yes, there is nothing like a financial crisis in an election year to bring out those billion-dollar promises.

Thank you, Sen. McCain, for having the backbone to say the American taxpayers should not have to shoulder the burden of the private sector’s greed.

It appears Treasury Security Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke are signing off on a plan that will cover the negative value in mortgages across the nation. The so-called “negative value guarantee certificates” are the federal government’s newest weapon against previous government blindness and private sector gluttony.

Does anyone see the irony of the free-market champions Paulson and Bernanke flip-flopping with a government bailout? To go one step further, Clinton and Obama want to force lending rates lower on existing loans and include full government (taxpayer) guarantees.

Wait a minute, a lot of us lost money in the stock market last year, so what about a bailout for us? Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is tanking with share prices plummeting, so can we bail them out too? Where do we draw the line on negative valuation bailouts? Oh, yeah, it only matters when the investment bankers are losing money.

We did not learn from the 1980s savings and loan bust, and the subject of “moral hazard” comes into play once again. Greedy self-indulgent behavior can rock the economy. However, if you believe in free markets, the way to prevent “irrational exuberance” in the future is to let the consequences be dealt with today.

Another presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, asked Fed Chairman Bernanke the following in 2007: “I want to follow up on the discussion of moral hazard. I think we have a very narrow understanding about what moral hazard really is. Because I think moral hazard begins at the very moment that we create artificially low interest rates, which we constantly do. And this is the reason people make mistakes, but there is a normal reaction when interest rates are low that there will be over-investment and mal-investment, excessive debt, and then there are consequences from this. My question is going to be around the subject of how can it ever be morally justifiable to deliberately depreciate the value of our currency?”

Unfortunately, Bernanke could not answer Rep. Paul’s question because the American people would not want to hear that the Federal Reserve is more interested in protecting the profits of the banking industry under any circumstances than handling the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and soaring consumer prices.

The banks and mortgage lenders are specially trained to evaluate risk. So are the credit-rating agencies that gave these faulty loans solid credit ratings, as did the financiers who bundled them with less-risky loans and sold them to other financial institutions, and the hedge fund managers who hide them in their portfolios.

What a disgraceful day it is when we take from the pensioners, savers, working stiffs and fixed income recipients to save the hides of a greedy few who make up the top 5 percent of income in our country.

I do not think either political party is up to the task of doing what is morally right. But I do applaud Sen. McCain for taking a stand on behalf of the taxpayers.

Steve Brown

stevebrownptc@ureach.com

Peachtree City, Ga.

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