It is a privilege to praise John Rabil Jr. for the fine article presented in The Tidewater News (“Financial reform won’t do much for economic recovery,” July 25).

Even though I have not read the entire 2,319 pages of the “Comprehensive Financial Reform Legislation,” I have followed much commentary by many contributors analyzing various provisions passed Thursday, July 23, by both houses of Congress and sent to the president for his signature.

On July 21, I had received an e-mail from U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., praising the great work of his powerful fellow senators who constructed the Financial Reform Bill.

This praises the phenomenal work over the past year that this bill represents. In addition, he stated that in another year, they might just get around to doing something about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two big governmental entities that largely caused this terrible recession or depression.

You cannot believe how many new agencies will be created and how many new government employees will be hired to implement the rules and regulations required to check on everything from transparency, accountability and profitability of banks, brokerage firms and every facet of financial institutions that the government may ultimately control.

From this e-mail, I gather that this in effect could allow a complete takeover of most all of our financial systems by government, once the council of regulators is created and empowered. In addition this bill creates a new federal agency, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, which will police consumer financial products and standards.

So much for leaving Freddie and Fannie for another time.

In my humble opinion, the citizens of our great country would have been far better served if we had 60 senators with the intellect and ability to produce a bill that would follow the guidelines based on what Rabil has pointed out so well in this article.

Rabil clearly stated what a huge expansion of the federal government will be accomplished at a cost of more than $30 billion. If the rules and regulations set up by these agencies and sub agencies are violated, the discretionary power is there for them to take over all kinds of financial institutions, thus destroying them or placing them under government management.

This obviously will immediately wreck both investor and consumer confidence in the institution.

With what has been done to our economy by our legislators as a result of passing the National Healthcare Bill, the $787 billion Stimulus Bill, the fact that we have a $1.3 billion budget deficit and a jobs benefit bill that have all passed and been signed into law and along with this Finance Reform Bill, we are talking real overall deficits.

Few seem to worry about our country going down the tube financially. The very thought that our national debt is more than $13 trillion should be cause for tremendous anxiety regarding what we are imposing on our children and grandchildren when trying to figure how it will be paid.

Only idiots can believe that we can spend our way out of this tragedy when we have to borrow the money with interest.

It is so unfortunate that we don’t have a majority of congressional legislators like U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., who bring common sense to the table when deciding the issues. It is time that we send the big spenders home this coming November and elect people who know how to create non-governmental jobs while paying the bills.