BUD BREWER
One Man's Opinion
FIVE PILLARS OF AMERICA’S GREATNESS
Sunday September 4, 2011: On Meet the Press, hosted by DAVID GREGORY, TOM FRIEDMAN, Wall Street Journal columnist, PAUL GIGOT, Historian and author, DORIS KEARNS, Political Strategist MARK MCKINNON, and Representative MAXINE WATERS sat down and had a very interesting discussion regarding where we are as a country, how we got here and how can we progress toward more positive times. I found the ideas and explanations regarding economic and political development in our country quite interesting, some controversial but for the most part intellectually stimulating. At least ideas expressed by those other than Maxine Waters. Poor Maxine, she is like a broken record voicing political hyperbola that plays well in the Black Caucus but in the real world is of little value other than to stimulate the cheers of her constituency, which is highly dependent upon government financial and political subsidies. Here is her position on how to get the economy growing:
REP. MAXINE WATERS: “Before we get to, before we get to the next level, we’ve got to recognize that there are big problems in this country. Foreclosures, the banks will not do loan modifications, and we 
have not come up with a program by which we can [keep] people in their homes. We need to be bold enough for the President to say to the bankers, “You come into this office Mr. Banker, we’re going to talk about how you are going to write down loan principal, how we’re going to keep people in these homes, how we’re going to make sure the interest rates are no more than 4 percent.” People want to hear the answers about how they’re going to have just a decent quality of life.” The President will bring a plan to create jobs this coming Thursday and we can only hope that it includes investment and increases in revenues by raising taxes on the rich. We have to invest more to get our people jobs not cut spending by $1.5 Trillion as proposed by the Special Committee of Twelve.”
Sure Maxine, let’s tax and spend more. Let’s have all the banks write down the unpaid face value on all their mortgage loans or other commercial paper on their balance sheets so that borrowers will have more money in their pocket to spend on some other need or want. Let’s continue to spend beyond our means. That will really stimulate growth and get the economy rolling again. But wait a minute, these loans were originally written to extend credit based upon the expectation that they would be repaid in full with an agreed amount of interest for the use of the money lent. Government mandates requiring lenders to write down balances or change the terms of interest is in effect a forced gift from lender to borrower and was in no way intended by the lender when they made an investment in your constituent’s dream of owning a home. Once we start going down that road, why would anyone enter into an agreement to invest their capital in a loan collateralized by an asset that in the event of a default, under your scenario, may not be taken by the lender to liquidate and recover their capital? That is how business is done. For a loan, the lender and borrower execute a note describing how and when the loan and interest thereon will be paid to the lender. If a borrower fails to perform in accord with the terms, they lose; harsh consequence? Sure, but without this process the people you say you are so concerned about would have no, zip, nada access to a loan enabling them to buy a home or any asset for that matter.
After these comments by Ms. Waters, the group got back to reality and began to exchange views on how we got here and where are we going as a nation. I liked the explanation given by Tom Friedman when he stated “America didn’t get to be a great country by accident. We had a formula for success that you could actually date back to Hamilton. It was five pillars: First: assure education for our people up to and beyond whatever the level of technology is, whether it’s the cotton gin, the super computer, or the internet; Second, immigration, attract the world’s most talented and energetic people. Third, infrastructure, have the world’s best infrastructure. Fourth, market capitalism, have the right rules in place for incentivizing capital formation and risk-taking and preventing recklessness. And last, government-funded research, put those together, stir, bake for 200 years, and you get the United States of America. Now, if you take all five of those pillars, and you look at the last decade, which we should call the “terrible twos”, possibly one of the worst, if not the worst decade in American history, what do we have? Education quality is declining; infrastructure is deteriorating; immigration policy is a disaster; rules for capital investing totally missed the subprime fiasco; government-funded research and development has become almost totally disoriented with deficit explosion.
So all five of our pillars of success have been weakening, maybe even beyond recovery. But if we are going to slow or stop this slide into becoming a second rate country, and that’s what we’ve got to be looking at, the president’s has got to be out there defending his policies as being consistent with rebuilding these pillars or changing them and providing the kind of leadership that reflects a private-government partnership to restore our foundation of greatness. If he elects to ignore what needs to be done, we can only pray that we have time to restore respect and confidence in the Government after the electorate votes to change direction in 2012. As frustrating as it is to have people in Congress like the Maxine Waters of the world, and as disappointing as it is to have a weak President, we can reverse the direction of our seeming socio-economic destiny in the coming election in 2012. Let’s hope we find the way up out of this dilema.
One Man’s Opinion- Bud Brewer