As the news poured in of the U.S. government seizing the mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the initial cost of at least $200 billion, we all woke up yesterday morning to a world where we are finally socializing our mortgage industry. How many Europeans do you think are laughing at us as they are learning of this, too?

Think about this for a second … if these companies were able to sacrifice losing so much money to begin with by lending out money to subprime borrowers, how much could they have made to begin with? Is it me, or should we be seeing some big guys in handcuffs? I mean, after all, they did cause us to enter a recession … did they not?

In The Wall Street Journal yesterday, the article “Ford CEO Mulally Says Lawmakers Back Auto Makers” by Jeff Bennett was about how Ford, GM and Chrysler want the government to provide them with as much as $50 billion in low cost loans since they have been struggling with the decrease in car sales. I cannot imagine how we can actually care to do this. If Ford has been experiencing a second quarter loss of $8.7 billion, they should have produced less of the gas guzzlers like the 2008 Explorer (miles per gallon is 14 city, 20 highway) and poured most of their money into making more of the fuel-efficient automobiles such as their 2008 Hybrid Escape (mpg is 29 city, 27 highway).

As the soaring gas prices have impacted car sales, one might wonder why these three companies are struggling more than others. Honda and Toyota haven’t been hit nearly as hard because of their heavy investment of research and development exclusively in the hybrid market. By the way, let me reiterate the fact that they dipped into their own piggy bank in order to produce better and more reliable fuel-efficient vehicles without waiting for gas prices to reach over $4 a gallon. At this point, it’s obvious that the cheap loans Ford, GM and Chrysler are lobbying for are intended to be used to catch up to Honda’s and Toyota’s hybrid car market so they can remain as competitive in the market.

I feel like this is the beginning of an ugly era for the United States, as we already bailed out Bear Stearns, and now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With the American car makers begging the government to bail them out, we will soon see more. For executives to see other corporate heads screw up and not be punished will only give them more of an incentive to be careless toward the public’s interests.

Americans have always been proud to work hard and lead the world in so many ways. We have always made every attempt to block out socialism from our lives. When the feds feel required to seize a company that makes up a good part of its industry, they need to heavily investigate what went wrong and tell the public. Instead of putting the money where it can benefit us, the government has officially slapped every taxpayer in the face. The scary part of this is that none of the 2008 presidential candidates have yet to speak against this action.