The USA: Too Big NOT To Fail

By Russell D. Longcore

Washington DC doesn’t have the “Midas touch,” where everything they touch turns to gold. Washington has the “Merde touch,” where everything they do turns to shit.

Since 2008, we Americans have heard a new meme enter our lexicon. That new phrase is “too big to fail.”

The George W. Bush administration trotted out this phrase with its first stimulus plan and the bailouts of insurance, Wall Street and the car companies. We were all told that these companies were too big to fail, or too big to be allowed to fail.

In economies where the government doesn’t interfere, corporations that mismanage their assets and liabilities declare bankruptcy. The bankruptcy process either liquidates the business and pays off creditors, or allows the corporation to reorganize the company, renegotiate their debt and move forward with a new business plan. But the corporation is allowed to bear the weight of the choices they made and live with the consequences of their failure.

All the companies/entities who got bailout money should have been allowed to experience free-market consequences. All of them. Instead, Washington placed the market risk squarely on the backs of the American taxpayer.

All we’ve heard for months…years…even today…is that some business entities and government programs are too big to be allowed to fail. The licitness¹ of an activity is being determined by its scale. But no entity is too big to fail. However I can think of one entity that is too big NOT to fail. That entity is The United States of America.

Washington doesn’t care if it destroys the purchasing power of the Dollar by printing paper money and causing hyperinflation. They just don’t want to have unemployment spike over the bankruptcy and reorganization of big employers.

So the United States of America exists in a condition that is unsustainable. The United States of America is too big NOT to fail. Small government is manageable government.