Jay Lillie

Originally posted in October 2008 and republished by popular demand.

 

Why should you pay any attention to what I have to say regarding Congressional politicians and this year’s financial news?  Probably NOT because . . .

         I have a degree in finance from the Wharton School,

         I’ve practiced financial transaction law on Wall Street, in London and in Tokyo,

         I understand a little about our Constitution,

         I’ve been a successful lawyer - businessman, or

         I write and publish novels, essays and legal commentary;

But . . .

I have no hidden agenda;

I’m not running for any office;

I don’t want your money;

I’m not registered with either political party and never have been;

I’m not out to win the Nobel Prize; and

I don’t trust politicians who have a history of putting themselves first and their country second.

 

Please tell me if you can which of the following notions that have been rolling around in my alleged mind over the past few months are not true?

 

1.         Government spending did not get our grandparents out of the Great Depression. The Japanese accomplished that when they bombed Pearl Harbor, and business and government went to work building a war machine.

 

2.         The current financial crisis is a wake-up call that history may record as a blessing that came along in time to avoid a much deeper problem. The devil is in details of what we do next year to avoid a repetition. Don’t ever forget the danger of what Alexander Hamilton called the tyranny of the majority . . . the unbridled power of 51%, who don’t know what they don’t know, to move in a stampede-like rush that’s difficult to stop until it goes too far

 

3.         Congressional politicians and like-minded pundits will blame everyone but themselves in an effort to use the current crisis to advance more extreme socialist ideologies. In fact this has already begun.

 

4.         Social Security and Medicare are the next crisis waiting to happen, and if not approached by Congress in a more responsible, non-political, manner will be another wake-up call, far worse than anything we’ve experienced to date.

 

5.     Congress for 80 years has used their taxing power to reward and punish. I’m not sure this is what the authors of the Constitution had in mind.

 

6.         Few have acted like we’ve been at war since 9/11, because in wartime people are expected, even required, to make sacrifices for the cause. All most of us were asked to do was buy and spend. That does not mean, however, that we’re not in a war for our very survival.

 

7.         When something sounds too good to be true it usually is. The markets always will make us pay for politicians who use their power to regulate to further their own or their friends’ personal or ideological agendas.

 

8.         We allow candidates for national elected office to buy our votes, and this makes our freedom more tenuous and the Congress less accountable for what they do and fail to do.

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