Liberty Maven

Many in the liberty loving wing of the United States, including Ron Paul, cried foul when the Federal Reserve bailed out Bear Stearns. Now it appears that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be “nationalized” and bailed out as well with a blank check from taxpayers.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – The government is expected to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as soon as this weekend in a monumental move designed to protect the mortgage market from the failure of the two companies, which together hold or guarantee half of the nation’s mortgage debt, a person briefed on the matter said Friday night.

Some of the details of the intervention, which could cost taxpayers billions, were not yet available, but are expected to include the departure of Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, according to the source, who asked not to be named because the plan was yet to be announced.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and James Lockhart, the companies’ chief regulator, met Friday afternoon with the top executives from the mortgage companies and informed them of the government’s plan to put the troubled companies into a conservatorship.

It seems our push towards some weird tasting flavor of socialism and/or fascism is increasing lately at an alarming rate. Are people too lazy to be outraged? As Ron Paul shouted in one of the debates during his campaign, “I MEAN WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?”

Later on in the story is this gem:

Fannie Mae was created by the government in 1938, and was turned into a shareholder-owned company 30 years later. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 to provide competition for Fannie.

Shouldn’t it be obvious to people by now that that U.S. government fails in just about everything they set out to do? The late great Libertarian Harry Browne discussed this in Reason Magazine back in 1998.

“Anytime you turn anything over to the government, you transform what was a commercial, medical, social, safety, financial, or military matter into a political issue — to be decided by politicians like Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Teddy Kennedy, and Jesse Helms. And guess how they make their decisions?

Conservatives recognize that government is incapable of eliminating poverty, discrimination, smoking, drinking, and many other supposed ills. But when the target is crime, foreign dictators, pornography, drugs, abortion, cloning, or any other item on their menu, government is suddenly transformed into Superman. Just allocate enough money, and the problem will be solved. And if the problem isn’t solved, that’s proof that not enough money was spent. Transpose the menus and you get the definition of a liberal.

Libertarians, however, know that government doesn’t work — even when it tries to do something we want. Government is coercion — pure and simple. Every government program involves forced activity, forcible prohibition, and/or forced financing — or else it wouldn’t be a government program. And there’s no way to make force efficient or benevolent; it’s just force. Thus libertarians are continually looking for ways to take functions — any functions — away from government, because they want to reduce government force to the absolute minimum possible.”

Ron Paul and Bob Barr are right today just as much as Harry Browne was back then. I think Harry had a knack for being more persuasive with his libertarian argument than Barr or Paul do today.