Today's gripe

The renegade Republicans who voted against the bailout measure in the House earlier this week had a couple of good points. I think their idea of making banks purchase insurance on their bad loans instead of having the government purchase them had some merit. I think their objection to buying those securities at some imaginary value rather than the present market price was right on. But some of those renegades, including our own Congressman Tim Murphy, voted against the measure for preposterous reasons. Here's what Murphy said in a press release immediately after the vote:

"... Instead of moving the bad debt around we should be creating a means by which to bring actual money into the markets. If we drilled on the outer continental shelf and went for the Colorado shale oil, if we looked to the north slope of Alaska we would yield trillions in federal income. Trillions of dollars into our economy. Real money. But we continue to keep it all off limits."

I guess Murphy has it in mind to nationalize all the oil companies, because how else would we yield "trillions of dollars in federal income." Even if our government were to subsidize all this new drilling (you think about a $700 billion incentive to the oil companies would work?), it would take many years for the oil to reach the market, and if the oil companies were not nationalized, they would simply be selling it on the world spot market. How would that free up credit in this country?

All we have to do to get out of this mess is to drill for more oil? Hey, I guess that kid you were going to send to college can wait 8 or 10 years until he can get his college loans. Hope your car last that long, too.