The Predatory Foxes Guard the Henhouse

Last week, Wall Street underwent a shock to the system that quickly rippled down to Main Street. And now Main Street is being asked to bail out Wall Street. Experts are calling it the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Let there be no mistake: this crisis is the direct result of politicians in Washington letting the foxes guard the henhouse. And now they want to solve the problem by throwing more chickens – our chickens! – at the most predatory foxes.

With the folding of some banking titans and the Fed's $85 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG, all of us suddenly have reason to be much more worried about the security of our economic futures, watching as the market bounces up and down on our pensions and retirement savings. Small and medium-sized businesses are also suffering a great deal. Since they are most dependent on bank loans for capital, the economic malaise puts them in direct danger of losing a lifeline.

And throughout it all, people are asking themselves, who let this happen?

Politicians are not doing their job. They took major contributions from banks and insurance companies and then handed the keys to the stores over to the very industries they should have been holding accountable. They let these traders play high-risk poker with our retirement security. They let the mortgage lenders treat our homes like Monopoly pieces. And nobody's holding corporations accountable because there's too much special interest money in Washington.

These bailouts began more than a decade ago, and Washington did nothing to cure the problem, only to cover the wound. When corporate contributors and lobbyists write our policies, eventually the consumers pay the price.

One in five mortgages in the fifth district is subprime, and yet even as we saw this crisis coming, Washington failed to crack down on predatory lending practices. The possibility of 20% of homes foreclosing in our district would spell disaster.

Congress is now stepping in with a massive government bailout to keep the crisis from getting worse. This package is expected to add another $700 billion to our already exploding national debt, and meanwhile all the benefits are for the least responsible lenders and few of the underlying problems are addressed.

Any government action must help not only the major financial firms but also protect the interests of American taxpayers and families by safeguarding their pensions and college savings, stemming the tide of home foreclosures, and protecting small businesses. The bailout must also include measures of accountability for the Treasury to ensure the people have some say in how their taxpayer dollars are being used. While this is a serious crisis that needs swift, bipartisan action, we cannot rush into handing over a big, blank check to the government. We need to get it right because Virginia's middle-class families cannot afford another shortcut solution.

Consumers need real protection now more than ever. It's time for leaders in Washington to put Main Street ahead of Wall Street.

Tom Perriello is the Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia's Fifth District. You can find out more about his campaign at www.PerrielloForCongress.com or by visiting one of our eight district offices in: Appomattox, Bedford, Charlottesville, Danville, Farmville, Martinsville, Moneta, and South Hill.