Question Posted that students need to respond to and then respond to two other students to get credit.

The first reply is from me the student, the second is from the teacher of the class, the third is the student’s (my) rebuttal.

The country has been experiencing many pains and the economy is struggling. One struggle that the country is going through is that many homes are in foreclosure. What do you think that the government can do to correct this problem? What role should private citizens take? What do you think made this problem occur in the first place and what would you do to solve it?  
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Responses Author Date & Time
Your browser may not support display of this image.   Your browser may not support display of this image.   Your browser may not support display of this image.    [snip] 19 Oct 09  12:10 PM MST
Your browser may not support display of this image. If any government involvement is deemed necessary it should be local and not federal. That said, there is a process already in place to handle foreclosed homes. Until that process is deemed to be broken I see no reason for interference from either the private citizen or the federal government. Federal government backing of Fannie and Freddie in forcing the hands of banks to lend to people incapable of supporting those loans (in the name of fairness) with no true oversight is what led to this problem in the first place. The free market if left alone will correct itself. If there is any role for the private citizen to take in this matter it would be to vote people like Barney Frank out of office. There is a video on youtube under the terms Barney Frank and either Fannie or Freddie that shows our good senator in about 2004 lobbying against the need for oversight of Fannie and Freddie. I would step back tell the government to do the same and let the free markets adjust themselves in order to right the wrong in the housing market. 
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Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image.   Your browser may not support display of this image.   Your browser may not support display of this image.    Charlotte Weybright 19 Oct 09    1:10 PM MST
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Is your theory, then, that the giant corporations will do what is in the best interests of the average, middle-class citizen? 
 
The "free" market has never existed. Regulation in some form or another has existed for centuries. The only thing the free market adjusts is the amount of money earned by the huge corporate interests at the expense of everyday citizens. 
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Yes the free market does exist but has been dying a painful death in this country of the free. Many democrats and republicans alike over this last century have done everything in their power to turn this country from a democracy to an oligarchy. Do those same politicians who run our government while taking money from those big, bad corporations to look the other way have our best interests at heart? The free market does not just include big bad pharmaceutical, financiers, and insurance companies. No, free markets also include private citizens called consumers, small business owners (which some want to overly protect from failure and moving with the times) and all sizes of businesses in between the large and small. Had the government under President Johnson never gotten into the housing market business by creating Fannie and Freddie in the first place then we would not be in the mess we are currently in. Later in time those same style bureaucrats hid the defects of those same companies. The "free markets" left alone would be able to do their job and only raise those of us worth raising in standard of living to that higher standard. Free markets get rid of the weak and irrelevant and create a place where everyone must give their 100% to the job of life. There would be no 'fairness standard’ created for the purpose of trying to uplift the businesses that need to fail. To ensure our survival free markets should be allowed to do their jobs. Yes a certain percentage of big dollar businesses do pay off senators in order to not have regulations jammed down their throats but again if the government would only intervene when necessary we would not have such terrible social ideas like, welfare, medic-aid, social security, Amtrak, Fannie, Freddie, No Child Left Behind and the list goes on and on. Yes, I admit that regulations do exist and have throughout history but our laws should and have in past always allowed for social Darwinism to be the course of things with regards to business. My theory is not what you believe rather my theory is that big government is not my be-all-end-all solution to every problem out there and less government would be my first step to correcting the problems that have plagued our free market system. I understand some people take a very narrow interpretation of a free market system in which there cannot be a truly free market system while rules and regulations are in effect. My definition is much broader in that while rules and regulations do exist the term ‘free’ means free to excel and free to fail, my philosophy encompasses the 'sink or swim' and 'trial by error' theories. Those theories are what our founders sought to protect by creating the opportunity to 'sink or swim.' Their approach came through not only regulation of business and law, but regulation of government as well. This approach and not a lack of regulation altogether is what created our country and gave us that opportunity which we today refer to as a 'free market'.