Column for August 11, 2011

I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy losing thousands of dollars overnight. Thanks to the Congress and President of the United States, that is exactly what just happened. Whether or not I recover that money remains to be seen. I am sure that there are others who lost a lot more than I did, but any loss like this is something I notice. If you are like me, you may have a 401(k) retirement savings plan or perhaps some other sort of arrangements. Maybe you invest in the stock market for income or to dabble and play. Whatever your status is, I am sure that you have heard the news of the falling stock market over the past few days.

Quite honestly, I am not a big time investor, but I have made a few investments over the years and am working on building a nest egg for my retirement years. For years I have been socking away money into my company’s retirement plan. Like all things economic, the market fluctuates. I took quite a hit several years back when my employer merged with another company and the company stock plummeted. I lost thousands of dollars in the value of my 401(k). Just since last week, my retirement fund has lost over $6000 and that does not include the downturn from today’s market. Still, I would rather put my money in the market and risk it than putting it in the government coffers and pray that the government can afford to give me back my own money with a far lower rater of return on investment than what I am still getting in my 401(k).

With the recent federal government’s “credit rating” being downgraded a notch, a lot of investors are having knee-jerk reactions. David Beers, the head of Standard and Poor’s (one of three key credit-ratings agencies) government debt-rating unit, got it right. He said, “Congress and the administration are jointly responsible for the conduct of fiscal policy. So, this is not really about either political party." Predictably, the ones most responsible for the financial problems have been pointing fingers at everyone but themselves. I have in front of me two news articles about blame shifting for the stock market and credit rating debacle.

Far left liberals have been branding Republicans as steadfast ideologues that were inflexible. Senator (and former Presidential candidate) John Kerry blamed the “Tea Party” followers for the downgrade. No, Senator, it was a problem with spending that led to the downgrade, not a particular group of people who stood in opposition to the irresponsible and reckless spending that we have seen over the past five plus years (and yes, I include some of the tenure of George W. Bush in this) that was the reason that the nation’s credit rating was taken down a notch for the first time in our history.

The sodomite Representative from Massachusetts, Barney Frank proffered yet another absurd explanation. He blamed our “spending too much money being the military policemen of the world." In all fairness, I am in agreement with Frank that we should pull back our military from much of the world and police our own borders rather than protecting those of other nations and supporting the economies of foreign countries. However, military spending is not the problem alone. The problem is with entitlement spending that is eating up the majority of our budget. We spend far more on wealth redistribution than we do on the military. Barney Frank has had his hands involved with the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mack scandals, which were costly to the American taxpayers. The policies that he does support and fight for cost Americans far more than our military ever thought of costing.

I recently heard a Christian book publisher speak in Wilson, NC. He seemed fairly naive when it came to political issues. He stated that Democrats were too far to the left (I agree with that) and that the Tea Party was too far to the right. He was way off with that last part. The so-called Tea Party folks simply want a few things such as a return to fiscal sanity and the restrictions imposed by the US Constitution. There is nothing “far right” about wanting to adhere to our founding document. The ironic thing is that the person who coordinated that speaking engagement is a leader in the local Tea Party movement. I could feel the tension in the room after he made that inane statement.

In the interest of disclosure, I am not a registered Republican, nor am I a member of any Tea Party organization. As far as I am concerned, both are way behind the times. I don’t consider the GOP to be conservative any longer and I was preaching constitutional government and fiscal sanity long before the Tea Party Movement came about.

Here is what I do know for sure. It is the irresponsible policies of Congress and the President that have seriously affected my personal wealth and that of millions of other Americans. The leaches who depend upon government handouts and like the current reckless spending notwithstanding, let’s all remember who has been affecting our personal finances when we go to the ballot box in 2012.