by Savage Baptist, No Blog of Significance
Look, here’s the text of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Simple enough, ain’t it? If the Constitution does not give a power to the United States, that is, to the Imperial Federal Government, it doesn’t have it.
Such powers belong either to the States or to the people (by which you can tell that the States and the people are not the same thing, which is why U.S. Senators were originally elected by the state legislatures, and which means that the States now have no representation in Washington, but that’s another subject…).
So tell me: where in the United States Constitution is the Imperial Federal Government delegated power to buy up toxic debt from private banks?
(Cricket sounds.)
Really, we ought not to be asking what Washington should do about the bank crisis before asking what Washington is allowed to do.
But then, if we were in the habit of asking that question, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and so many other problem children would never have existed in the first place, would they?