Our forefathers would probably call our present economic state of affairs “a tyranny by the few”! Boom and bust cycles in the trillions of dollars affecting world markets simultaneously could scarcely have been imagined in their day.

Most problematic for us today is the flawed idea of “deregulation”: government, including the military, doing things “better” by “getting out of the way” and privatizing functions through outsourcing duties. It sounded good until rising costs eroded the savings, lack of meaningful oversight resulted in shoddy work, and subsequent organizational breakdowns inflicted loss of crucial control verging on chaos.

While not exactly the failure of everything, it gives us a cascading collapse of the financial markets and the recession in which we find ourselves. It didn’t just happen out of the blue. Not just one Republican nor just one Democrat is at fault. Some have said there is plenty of blame to go around — they’re right. However, “they” are not the populist majority but are a favored few.

Under the lame-duck Bush administration, deregulation continues today. Its concept is to lessen the intrusiveness of government control. As has proved the case, with little or no government policy in effect, the corporate market place — far from regulating itself — soon becomes a ravenous beast greedily preying upon unwary, unwise and easily duped consumers; especially those purchasing a home for the first time in their lives.

When I was young, I married a person and our family moved from renting to buying property. We never heard of “variable rate” mortgages. Later, just look at the thousands, yes millions, of people who were sold variable rate mortgages with monthly charges many were told were likely to increase.

Side effects may be delayed for the Joplin area, but hundreds of thousands in larger metropolitan areas such as Kansas City and St. Louis are directly affected. Recent studies have shown that, unlike conventional housing loans, sub-prime mortgages (no longer being issued) were far more risky, involving “high, hidden costs, exploding adjustable rates and prepayment penalties to preclude refinancing” and “in addition to being the target of mortgage companies specializing in sub-prime lending, minorities were steered away from safer, conventional loans, by brokers who received incentives for jacking up the interest rate.” More statistics are available from the report “Beyond the Mortgages Meltdown” June 2008.

National Public Radio offers more information daily about our current crisis including the so-called “rescue” of severely troubled Wall Street financial markets by an unprecedented act of Congress in early October. By now you know it was wishful thinking that the amount funded by taxpayers — as shockingly large as it was — doesn’t qualify as a rescue (nor a bailout) but may offer some help in slowing the spread of tight credit to other portions of our ailing economy. Meanwhile, the core of the downward-spiraling problem — home foreclosures — goes unaddressed, continuing nationwide at the rate of thousands per week.

Bank credit tightened. More than 600 car dealerships have been forced to close because of what has been called a “credit freeze.” Obviously, most banks believed those former dealerships had far more “high risk” customers applying for credit so the higher percentage rates on car loans translated into a “freeze” for all intents and purposes. Those car dealerships were unable to carry such debt themselves. Also, most stockpiled car repossessions are gas-guzzling SUVs.

As if that weren’t enough, the dinosaur designers of Detroit now expect a $25billion to $75 billion bailout from Congress in order to finally retool to make more efficient autos. Smaller businesses that had been in the habit of borrowing money for payroll cannot find reasonable credit. Some are closing their doors.

Since markets are interrelated worldwide, the adjustment from this burst bubble of blatant greed plus lousy management will take 18 months, maybe two to three years, to be resolved, according to market analysts. At least 20 nations are planning this month to cope with very sick financial markets.

The deregulation debacle, with its fraud and mismanagement, is already causing bipartisan members in the U.S. Congress to think in terms of more responsibility regulating Wall Street and financial institutions. Several “golden parachute” retirements are gone for failed leaders as they seek corporate welfare. More congressmen are considering the arrest and legal punishment of those so dedicated to a perversion of the “American dream” held by the rest of us.

During the recent national election, both parties emphasized we were in for “change.” Will a new Obama administration inherit a depression by January 20, 2009? Watch for more indications of how little your dollar buys in the days ahead.

Let’s hope the functions of our court system haven’t been deregulated and slyly “out-sourced.” The selfish few who practice corporate, criminal mismanagement should have their trials by a jury before they’re allowed to totally trash Main Street.

John T. McDonald lives in Joplin.