Forget QE3, Let's Take Back QE2 If We Can

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- As the European market circles the drain, the Federal Reserve is increasingly expected to announce another round of quantitative easing. If the Fed moves forward it will have greater flexibility than its counterparts in Europe.

The S&P 500 ETF SPY (SPY) has moved well off June lows and is pricing in more money, more money, more money. It's unfortunate that we are left in this situation after government program after government program have not only failed but weakened our nation.

Given the government's inability to get us out of our financial mess -- and only make it worse -- it's difficult to reconcile the thought processes of intervention advocates. We do not need another round of QE to prove that the Washington needs to take a step back.

Washington is endeavoring to do the best it can in a tough situation. Of course, in Congress that means passing legislation it believes will aid the members in the next election, regardless of the future consequences. With elections every two years, it should come as no surprise that it has become impossible to predict what the tax rates will be in three years. While calls for more quantitative easing become louder and louder, the cries to stop the never-ending meddling by the government fall on deaf ears.

Seriously, how the hell can one expect the market to react differently after a third round of kicking the can down the street considering the first two didn't demonstrate an appreciable benefit to anyone other than insiders? How many people still believe that a simple increase in the speed dial of the printing press is going to help the country?

The warnings have been loud and clear for years that we would someday have to pay the piper. The whole mess would be funny if so many people didn't get hurt in the process. The "do gooders" in Washington are the real problem and they have largely sidestepped the blame they so rightly deserve.

For starters, "do gooders" in Washington created expensive programs to put people in homes that they couldn't afford. The programs were sold on the false premise of helping the working poor and the middle class realize the "American dream." The reality is that people who did the right things and saved for a home had to compete against those that didn't, resulting in higher home prices.

Owning a home doesn't help the working poor when the value of their home falls below the amount owed. It may be impossible to calculation the emotional damage inflicted on working families from the "help" provided by Washington, but it's not funny pulling the carpet from under someone's feet.

When the government-created housing Ponzi scheme finally came to its natural conclusion, we have the situation we are in now. Did most learn anything? No, of course not, Congress was too busy pointing the finger at bankers and Wall Street. The fact that lenders were only acting on the conditions the government created was unsurprisingly left out.

We don't need more government intervention in the economy, what we need is a lot less. The idea that the government can actually help the economy is ignorant at best,

Progressive taxation is the worst kind of theft because it is the most de-incentivizing type of tax. removing the incentive to build wealth lowers the overall GDP and standard of living now and into the future.

The founding fathers never intended for the government to take the labor from some and hand it over to others that bureaucrats hold to a higher value.

The government is also not efficient in the process. The ending result is that quantitative easing lowers the overall wealth of the nation and prolongs the hardship faced by the citizens. It encourages Washington to continue without making the budgetary reductions needed. It is the encouragement that is the real danger. Quantitative easing prolongs the pain allowing Washington to continue spending money we don't have, on programs that lower the wealth of the nation.

Worse still is the fact that increasingly larger amounts of money are borrowed to pay for the process. Indentured servitude awaits Americans not even born yet, and for benefits they will not receive.

Advocating more government intervention into what is left of our free market with QE3 is like your drunk college buddy suggesting that the best Sunday morning cure is "biting the hair of the dog". Common sense tells those of us that are older it only prolongs the eventual misery while curtailing productivity.

It's time to live within our means, pay our bar tab, and clean up the mess created in Washington by administration after administration who took the public for suckers. It is time to tell legislators that we will do not believe it is the governments place to borrow against future generations so that we can temporarily raise our standard of living.

After two Sunday morning bloody Marys with beer chasers, we still have a pounding headache, and a third bloody Mary isn't going to help, the same can be said about QE3.

At the time of publication, the author held no positions in any of the stocks mentioned.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.