Free Credit Report Dot Com And Other Democrat Boondoggles

Ever wonder why it is that lately, every other television commercial is from a credit rating service touting their ability to improve your credit score? Let's face it, it's either that or the local "attorney du moment" enjoining you to call him if you think you've ever come in contact with asbestos, any number of prescription drugs, the IRS or an insurance agent that didn't drop his drawers and bend over when you called about a dislodged shingle during the last perturbance in the Gulf of Mexico. OffHisMeds cynically assumes that the credit rating agency advertising boom is all a scam; after all, you've either got good credit or you don't, and there's not a damn thing a third party should be able to do to improve it.

More to the question, what is driving this business such that it can afford a bigger advertising budget than the Big Three and Proctor & Gamble combined? OffHisMeds believes it is similar to other phenomena that only crop up when the economy is seriously and profoundly in the tank, and politicians start prescribing solutions with the same discrimination Charlie Sheen uses in his romantic liaisons'. For example:

1. Historically low interest rates followed by yet more historically low interest rates. Of all the things that politicians do that ought to be causing you to stuff the miserable remnants of your IRA into a coffee can and hide it under a floorboard (along with gaming the unemployment numbers or declaring that the Trillions they're stealing from you are "investments"), enticing you to refinance your mortgage has got to be near the top of the list.

On what other planet can you triumphantly declare that the hundreds of billions in mortgage refi's that have taken place during our so-called "recovery" are legitimate business activity, when the net of that activity is to take previously profitable mortgages and turn them into taxpayer subsidized money-losers? The answer to that question would be: Planet Obama. Sure, it's good for you the homeowner in the short term, but did we learn nothing from the last decade of Mortgage Orgy?

It's one thing for these knuckleheads to take mortgage contracts from the pocket of one banker and put them into the pocket of another and declare it "economic activity" when it clearly is not; it's yet another thing for them to declare these refi's profitable when they clearly are not; and it's yet another thing for them to continue to Feed The Monster by underwriting all this loan activity with many additional hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's quite another thing for you the Citizen to accept that all of this is true. Let's face it: these jackasses never learn anything until we teach them, which is never going to happen unless we learn our lesson first.

2. The proliferation of branch banks. Is it just me, or does it seem like there's a new one on every corner? That's not necessarily a bad thing considering the number of fast food franchises the banks likely displace, along with the nail salons, Mexican restaurants, dry cleaners, pawn shops, discount auto parts franchises, check cashing joints and dollar stores that propagate like weeds in Suburbia.

Ironically, the explosion of branch banks has mostly upside for OffHisMeds, in that: a) he won't have to pay for them until they inevitably fail, and b) they provide that many fewer opportunities for him to die prematurely from heart disease, since they've gobbled up valuable real estate from the aforementioned fast food joints, for which OHM has a weakness. It is simply worth noting, however, that the Tribbling* of banks goes hand-in-hand with the Tribbling of mortgage refi's and the Tribbling of the credit rating agencies currently clogging up the air waves. The three are inextricably linked to the frantic effort to re-leverage the American consumer and to get him hyper-consuming again. After all, that Trillion dollar Euro bailout the U.S. just underwrote isn't going to last forever.

3. Hospital construction. Scratch a Recession and you'll find a hospital building boom. Just look back over the past 40 years as Health Care went from 6% of a $1 Trillion pie to almost 20% of a $14 Trillion dollar pie, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hospital construction and the growth of the health care sector are portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, and yet a further sign of robust economic activity.

After all, who doesn't want health care?

Well, me for one. I'm perfectly content to remain healthy and out of the hospital, but seem to be in the extreme minority in the assumption that it is the natural tendency of the human body to remain healthy, ward off infection and disease, that kind of stuff. What good is a million year's of evolution otherwise? Why did my parents go to all the trouble of endowing me with an immune system and the good sense not to run into traffic if they didn't expect these efforts to keep me healthy?

Common sense says that the less you need to pay on health care, the more money you've got to spend on other things that make life enjoyable. My point here is that health care is not legitimate economic activity. What it is, is one of the reliable sectors that the government will inflate whenever true Private Sector economic activity falters. It simulates the real thing, which keeps the populace from freaking out. It also has a calming effect on our Pols, makes them feel useful, and sustains the illusion that they can actually have an impact on the Big Picture.

What all these things have in common is that none of them are on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the one infallible means by which to differentiate meaningful economic growth from the phony government-inspired kind. You remember Maslow from college, or 10th grade if you went to a Catholic High School prior to 1980. His pyramid laid out the things that rational people willingly seek out to sustain and improve their lives. Things like shelter, food, sex, safety, acceptance and enlightenment. Nowhere in there will you find that these things are achieved or even implied to be achieved by an overabundance of branch banks, mortgage loans, credit scoring agencies or hospital buildings, which means that none of them are rational activities. The same is true of Stimulus Plans, Health Care reform bills, Democrat subsidies for Planned Parenthood, AARP and Acorn, and so-called "investments" in Infrastructure.

If you have a single, healthy, unleveraged, cynical bone in your body - and one attuned to self-preservation - you already knew that, and you're asking yourself the questions Maslow would have enjoined you to ask: 1) Does an oversupply of these things contribute in the slightest to your happiness and overall welfare? Will they ever allow you to achieve the highest point of the pyramid - what Maslow calls "self actualization"?

Not likely, but they do put a smile on the face of Barack Obama and his apparatchiks.

* Tribbling - Mindless, uncontrolled and ultimately destructive growth or reproduction (See Season Two, Episode 15 of Star Trek, "The Trouble With Tribbles"; See also: the 111th Congress).