U.S. Libertarian Prez nominee slams Obama, McCain on bailout

Washington, Oct 21 (PTI) Slamming White House contenders
Barack Obama and John McCain for supporting the U.S. financial
bailout "nonsense", Libertarian Presidential candidate in the
fray Bob Barr has said that Americans will have to pay a heavy
price for this government intervention.

Claiming that the philosophy of his Party was being "very
mainstream" that follows the belief "Maximize individual
liberty; minimize government power", Barr, in an interview on
PBS, said, "I think the American people are going to start
realizing that a heavy price is going to have to be paid
because of this government intervention."

The former Congressman said he wanted to be the President
because neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain could move in
the direction of minimising government power.

"Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama very clearly, as
we've seen from this latest bailout nonsense, want to move us
dramatically down the road of more government spending, more
government power and that means less decision-making for the
individuals," Barr said.

Candidates like Barr are seen as having no traction at
all in the November 4, 2008 election and not even in a remote
way hurting the chances of either Republican nominee McCain or
Democrat's Obama.

However, the one-time Republican lawmaker from Georgia
who played a very prominent role in the House Impeachment
proceedings against former President Bill Clinton has been
quite determined to stay on in the race.

Promoting his candidature, he said, " ... bailout would
not be a word that would be mentioned positively in a Barr
administration."

He said that in such a scenario, the first person he
would have called into his office would have been "..somebody
we haven't heard from at all and that is the attorney
general.." and asked him "Where in heck have you been?"

Barr said he would told the attorney general that massive
fraud was being perpetrated here among financial institutions,
investment houses, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac very likely.

"Why haven't there been any prosecutions that would
reassure the markets, reassure the American people that their
investments, their hard-earned dollars are, in fact, being
protected?" he said.

Furthering his party's stance, Barr said, "The second
thing, in a Barr administration, we would not see the
government competing with private industry or investment
houses."

He alleged that that private investment houses and
investors had barely started coming into the marketplace and
buying up some of these troubled assets, such as Wells Fargo
coming in and buying up Wachovia, when the federal government
came in and put a stop to all of that by competing with the
private industry.

"There are a number of things that could have happened,
that should have happened (but) that didn't happen because of
the government intervention. There certainly are, as in the
case, for example, of Washington Mutual, institutions that
needed to go into receivership.

Perhaps some of them should go into bankruptcy. That
doesn't mean that all of those assets disappear. It simply
means that there's a reorganization and their assets and their
debt, certainly, would be bought up by other institutions that
see an opportunity, like Wells Fargo, like Warren Buffett
did," Barr said.

Rebuking the Bush administration, Barr said that
government officials ran around saying "The sky is falling and
the only way out of this crisis is this massive bailout,"
which, according to him caused everybody else to back away.

"Credit markets froze simply because the government said
'We are going to come in and bail you out'. So those private
institutions that could have started freeing up credit backed
away and didn't move in," he added.