OK, folks, I finally found the ultra secret combination that gets me into this blog! Sorry that it has taken so long but we are here now and the party can start!

The financial world isn't ending but the rules are changing. Throw out the old rule books and watch how the FED and the Treasury re-write the game. Pay careful attention because they have taken a lot of the penalties out of the game...think the championship game in RollerBall with Ben Bernanke as the head of the Houston team (OK, too obscure - go rent the movie - THE ORIGINAL version - and you'll understand).

If the FED or the Treasury or any government agency now stands ready to guarantee every piece of bad mortgage, student loan, LBO loans and other types of financial toxic waste that only the bankers got fee rich when they birthed these securitized hell spawns, what makes you think that the folks that actually OWE these debts are now MORE willing to pay?

A financial Yucca Mountain is just a few strokes of a President's pen away. See it grow, feed it with your tax dollars and then just water it a bit with other give-aways and entitlement programs. The Manhattan Project had nothing on this little gem of a financial MOAB (see reference to Taliban cave dwellers having the air sucked right out of their caves)!

I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack but if you think your rich uncle is going to leave you a fortune very soon, my guess is that you begin to work just a weee bit less and begin to anticipate the unearned windfall coming your way. Paying your bills somehow now seems just a little less important.

These guarantees will do more real harm that good. Oh, it will feel good for a while until you realize that each and everyone of us, as taxpayers, are taking it in the shorts with increasing federal debt, higher inflation and more interest on the federal debt. Depending upon how large these guarantees get, the bigger the problem. A drunk has to sober up sometime.

Remember, the big, bad voodoo daddy of all such guarantee programs, Social Security, is neither very social nor very secure and it is eating our national fiscal lunch. Do you think any of these guarantee programs will be better administered or have better consequences?

Final thought, would you ask your brother-in-law (the one your wife MADE you hire because "he really needs a job"), who nearly ruined your company by posting the combination to the company safe on "My Space" because he thought it would be safe and because he couldn't remember it), to run your finance department, manage your retirement plan and balance your check book? Any thoughts as to why it's a good idea to ask the FED to "manage" all institutions that affect our economy?

"Hey, Ben, grab me a beer, NASCAR is on." How did that work out for you, huh?