EconomicCrisis.US

If this story from the New York Times does not outrage you, check your premises and re-evaluate your principles:

In a bid to fend off the threat of a nationwide financial crisis, the Afghan government scrambled to shore up Afghanistan’s largest bank on Saturday after lines of frantic depositors mobbed the bank for a third day.

The efforts, which an Afghan official said could include the injection of Afghan government funds into the privately owned Kabul Bank, are meant to head off the run on the bank by its customers, who have withdrawn more than $200 million in the past few days amid fears of a wider economic collapse.

Officials said the Afghan government had not decided whether it needed to bail out the bank. But the Afghan Central Bank has pulled in funds from abroad, including $300 million that had been held in the United States Federal Reserve Bank, to have money on hand to guarantee the bank’s liquidity, American officials said.

A small team of advisers from the United States Treasury Department was in Kabul providing technical assistance, but American officials said no United States funds would be involved in the effort to rescue the bank.

This is not the first time the Obama Administration has used taxpayer dollars to help a foreign nation’s economy – $10 million was recently spent fighting unemployment in Sri Lanka. Somehow, I am not convinced by the Treasury Department’s assurances that U.S. funds will not be involved in the bank rescue efforts. As Milton Friedman once said,: “There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” If U.S. funds are not to be used, what good will they do in shoring up liquidity for Kabul Bank? Furthermore, last time I checked, the U.S. economy was still in a deep recession, and possibly headed for another bout of economic woe. Government spending does very little to help our economy when spent at home, it certainly won’t help us if spent abroad.

The real heart of the problem here is that, again, our government (and the Obama Administration, in particular) is not putting the economy first. Time and time again we see the economic wellbeing of Americans sacrificed for the sake of President Obama’s political friends or a ridiculous part of the liberal political agenda. Government funds are the property of American taxpayers, to be used only for legitimate government purposes designed to serve U.S. citizens. Any other use amounts to robbery with only a vague, subjective, altruist morality to serve as its cover.
By Bevan Sabo – freemarketmojo.com