Quote:
Originally Posted by zerospinboson
Why? They believe in the same thing you do. It's all about deregulation, the only difference being that they're in a position to line their pockets while doing so. It's not as if "Ron Paul x 535" would suddenly solve that, as he also believes in deregulation. Similar to "not having a health care system", using political positions for personal gain is only immoral if you call it that, and only illegal if you're obvious about it.
The only way to make sure this shit won't happen again is to regulate the system. If you don't, this will just keep happening until the public has no money left to put in the bank, as those bankers, quants and investors obviously don't give a toss about what the consequences of their actions are. On the other hand, they're just doing what they've been spoon fed to believe is right (i.e., maximize profits and personal gain without thinking of the future, or caring about what it does to others). This is the "anglo-saxon business model" (short term profits -> dividends) that's so much a part of your cultural heritage, and the only way to ensure it won't indirectly kill you yet is to regulate them. (mind you, the regulation was firmly in place, and none of it would've happened if the deregulation that started in the 80s hadn't happened, so it'd hardly be "radical", even though the wankers on the radio whining that "american values are being thrown to the wolves" would have you believe otherwise.)
"Classic small-government" is a pipe dream (look at what "small-govt believer" Bush did, pushing spending through the roof in order to try to bankrupt the government, saddling the public with the costs, and making sure lots of the money went to Halliburton & Co., thus ensuring that his friends would gain from his being in power) that I hope has once and for all been proven to be at very, very, very bad idea. Sure, Bush "decreased government", but he did it by outsourcing to companies that were a) his donors, and b) his cabinet's donors/friends/former employers.
Did you know that Halliburton has in some cases charged the federal government up to $80 per coke can delivered to Iraq?
That's what you get when party contributions are necessary for elections, and when the procedures that govern the bidding process that should happen when deciding which companies get which government contracts are ("re)lax(ed"), (I forget the word for this) this will doubly ensure that some corporations make tens of billions off the Iraq war while others don't.
But hey, nobody cares about those things, because they're "legal". And we wouldn't want more regulation, because that's bad. And corporations making money are good.
That's the kind of thing that would disturb me, but as you can see, they're all regulation-related, so I'm just being a european again.
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Let's see, who lowered the underwriting standard for writing mortgages? My hometown "hero", Henry Cisneros (who would later do time for making payoff to his mistress to keep her quite and lying about to the FBI. Gee if only he'd been President, he would have gotten off nearly scott-free
)
Who was in charge of the mortagage sub-committee in the House? Barney Frank. Who is on audio and video record multiple times saying "there no risk here (to subprime mortgages)" and besides, we need to help these people (who couldn't qualify for a mortgage).
And the guy in charge of Fannie Mae, who bought those subprime motgage pools?
He became Obama's economic adviser.
These are free marketers?
I'm old enough to remember the double digit inflation in the '70s, under regulation....