For all its intended invented image of indestructibility and endless funding to crush the opposition or using confiscated taxpayer funding along with deficit printed fiat currency, big government will never end poverty. Big government will never spread equality across the land. One thing we can be assured of though will be that once government has mobilized its bungling shadow over whatever crisis it needs to generate political leverage with it will do so with inefficiency, lies about its ability to solve the problem, and more national debt that threatens to destabilize the US Dollar! This is about the only realistic prediction that can be made about government intervention.

Truth from the past

Had the federal government adhered to the original directives of our forefathers who authored the US Constitution the present deficits that are in all likelihood insurmountable would not exist. Nationalizing US industry with bailouts forcing private corporations to have a big government partner only increases national debt and saddles the taxpayer with even more expenses that must be assessed and increased as the compounding interest payments make Congress feel justified in finding more ways to increase income taxes while prohibiting deductions and tax credits. The government merely takes the debt from the backs of failed businesses it bails out and transfers it to the beleagured taxpayer.

Better left alone

An early example of just how big government intervention made matters worse is the saga of the Great Depression. Once the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, presided over the 1929 Stock Market Crash quickly becoming a massive financial failure across world markets due to the kind of derivatives and failed exchange traded securities based upon rapidly declining equities, the inevitable followed. Banks backed by the Federal Reserve made foolhardy loans and greedily over extended their liquidity (cash reserves). One of the first steps taken under Roosevelt's Presidency was to force Americans to surrender their gold while banks closed thus wiping out account holder's life savings. Confiscating gold further devastated cash poor victims.

Norman Dodd reveals

Norman Dodd, a young and freshly graduated banking officer working for Morgan Banks was assigned to an investigation over just what had caused the Great Depression and what actions had been taken that had put the US financial system on a collision course with catastrophic failure. After a year on his project Norman Dodd was confounded by actions taken and financially contradictory decisions that left him stunned at the level of mismanagement. He scheduled a presentation he would give to a board of high power banking presidents at Morgan. Afterward, Dodd was told that he would be given an office, he could play tennis whenever he wanted, and that his pension would be arranged so that he had nothing to worry about in his future. This left Dodd astonished and after 6 months of his feet virtually on the desk awaiting further projects he went to his Morgan Bank manager.

Personal sacrifice of a whistle blower

Unable to accept that neither had he gotten a response over his thorough research of fraudulent banking practices or that his superiors had responded to the very report they had requested of him, Norman Dodd resigned rather than keep his cushy do nothing job designed to silence him. His bank manager informed him that the US banking system, as it was, would never operate under sound financial principles again. A number of crisis regulations enacted by the federal government saw to it that this statement would be true. Dodd found himself blackballed in the banking industry. He was unable to ever get a position at a bank again. he would end up being an investment advisor until he began work for the Reece Committee in 1951.

Emergency measures

FDR's actions in using emergency government funding programs to generate employment and the resultant hiring of the unemployed in order to build infrastructure for the nation were his only shrewd decisions. Building the Hoover Dam, massive national forestry projects, paving roads, and agricultural remedies for such crises as the "Dust Bowl" necessitated deficit generated funds in order to stimulate some kind of economic activity, yet subsequent bailouts and ill advised practices by the Federal Reserve and the US government would continue. By 1941 when World War II broke out the percentage of unemployment (25%) had not yet been effectively reduced.

Non-governmental fix

A recession that began in the late 1950's was quickly alleviated under President Eisenhower. From a nationally television address Dwight D. Eisenhower did not create a costly Congressional Committee to study the problem nor did he assign a special commission allocating millions of dollars for a detailed study. President Eisenhower merely instructed US citizens to go out and spend from 5 to 20 dollars at the retail level to stimulate the economy and end the emerging recession. It worked! Excessive federal spending and inefficient government sanctioned directives were not called upon or utilized.

Federally sanctioned fiscal crises

President Johnson's Great Society began huge deficits in earnest. The "War on Poverty" the "War on Drugs" the "War on disease" the "War on Illiteracy" all resulted in trillions of federal dollars being spent, yet only a culture of government dependency was created at the cost to the American taxpayer as a further drag on the private sector generated economy. Were lessons learned from the ineffectual results of these failures? No. In the future the Savings and Loan Bailout would ensue, along with the 2009 787 billion dollar bailout which only funded Democrat re-election slush funds and did not even addressed the promised 5% allocation for infrastructure spending for the nation's deteriorating roads and bridges. This marked only one of many false promises made by President Obama.