SWGA Politics

So Much For Law And Order

Once upon a time in this nation, you could trust a few things above all others. Millions of guys will watch football, millions of women will go shopping, and Paris Hilton would think the Nobel Prize came in a box of Nobel cereal. One of those things you could count on was that the judicial branch of government would uphold the rule of law. Well, at least I believed that. Ah, to be that naive again.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts ruling regarding the Indiana pension funds’ suit regarding how they got shafted in the Chrysler deal. The Court, which is supposed to uphold the law above government abuse, obviously can’t or won’t do that.

Yesterday, I wrote about how many ways this was wrong and I was genuinely hopeful that SCOTUS would uphold the rule of law and protect bond holders, but apparently that just can’t happen anymore as the government has run amuck, and the judicial branch has identified more with government than with the people.

So now people are left asking “what now?”

First, let’s face facts that bonds for struggling companies are about to pay a lot more for bonds than they normally would. The risk to lenders (remember that bond is a fancy word for loan) is that they’ll only get pennies on the dollar as the United States government ignores bankruptcy laws that have been on the books since the beginning of this nation.

With this, more and more companies will face bankruptcy or worse, liquidation, and the United States government will be asked to step in and bail out ever more firms. Based on what the Administration has done so far, we’ll find more and more businesses being essentially nationalized because they are “to big to fail” for whatever reason. Next thing you know, we are living in a true socialist state, especially if the President gets his health care plan.

So what can we as Americans do?

First, we can refuse to do business with any nationalized entity. This sucks too, because I love my Jeep Grand Cherokee and would like a Wrangler as my next vehicle. Oh well though…my nation is more important than my next car.

The reason for this boycott is that if Americans refuse to buy the cars, then the government would hopefully get the picture that we, the citizenry of this nation, are not in favor of government ownership of private business. It’s the only way we can make our voices heard for the time being, since the ballot box is still a ways away (yes, we’ll be getting into this then too).

Is there a potential downside? Possibly.

First, the government isn’t known for being bright. Individuals in the government can be very intelligent, but as a group they can get pretty dumb thanks to groupthink. So, they might just raise taxes instead, still arguing how these companies are to big to fail. Of course, let’s be honest. Like they really need a reason to raise taxes anymore though.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this could all be blown out of proportion. There could be minimal impact overall regarding bonds for companies, but I don’t think so. Instead, we’ll probably have a rough road ahead.

Time will tell the tale soon enough though.