About Rick Santelli…

Yesterday’s rant has made him the household name du jour.

I have a secret for you: he’s right. I’ve made money on investments. I’ve lost money on investments — big investments, too.  Some of my losses weren’t because I made uninformed decisions. Chance played a big role in it. But I played, and I knew the rules of the game, and I took on the risk I was comfortable with. Maybe the floor of CME group’s Board of Trade isn’t a statistical cross-section of America, but Santelli’s correct. Let bad mortgages go into foreclosure, or let the banks broker their own deals with their borrowers, but let them figure it out for themselves. If the asset is truly worthless, it’ll go to zero in value. Problem is, somebody will take a flyer on just about anything so long as they feel it’s at the right price. The market is simply nature.  Government can try to play God, but not even God attempts to do the things government troes to do. We cried for the government to do something about oil and gas prices. Get those fat cat speculators and Big Oil execs bringing in big bucks last summer when oil was $145/barrel.  We did nothing. What did it give us? $33/barrel oil and $1.80/gallon gas. Now we’re supposed to do something so we don’t grow more dependent on oil. (I don’t know; I think doing nothing did a good job of weaning us off gas guzzlers, and it also helped bring oil down.) The left hasn’t hesitated to skewer Rick. I could bore you with links to Democratic Underground, or Huffington Post or Wonkette, but if you want to go there, do it on your own time.  The White House is on board. Robert Gibbs even got personal with Santelli. How dare a derivatives trader (cue evil music) question the benign law professor? It is fun when the official spokesman of the President takes aim at a private citizen for daring express his opinion.

(By the way, nice softball from that reporter: “Calm the unwashed masses. Let them know how our Lord and Savior President is going to deliver us all from evil.” Santelli responds quite simply: Contract law must be sacred. Chris “I want to run as a Democrat from Pennsylvania, but I HAVE CREDIBILITY DAMMIT AS A JOURNALIST IGNORE THE FACT I WAS ON TIP O’NEIL’S PAYROLL AND JIMMY CARTER’S PAYROLL BUT SCREW RICK SANTELLI WHOSE CREDIBILITY IS IMPEACHED BY A VOTE FOR JOHN MCCAIN IN NOVEMBER” Matthews equates Rick Santelli to Ebeneezer Scrooge.

One point the Leftist blogs have made is that Santelli is a hack. He cheerleaded for TARP and bank bailouts last year, and now he’s bitching about the homeowner’s bailout. Very good point. Santelli’s sarcasm is obviously very subtle.



Now if only we can get him to run for the U.S. Senate, the Governor’s office, or Mark Kirk’s seat.