Wall Street and the right want to eat their cake and have it too. They want vital financial institutions to be left alone, given free reign to do as they wish - but when they screw up and cause a ripple effect throughout the economy they come running to the government for a no-strings-attached bailout.
Eh-eh.
You want the government to have a hand in the game, you have to play by the rules. You need oversight, regulation, a catchers mitt over the invisible hand. The crisis we’re facing now is a product of our government abandoning its watchdog role and becoming nothing more than a cheerleader on the sidelines. It’s time once again for our government to put on its referee’s uniform and get this game back under control.
It is a little deeper than just playing by the rules and taking your lumps.
To a certain extent, the economy, life is a casino. The Republicans have been systematically dismantling the various forms of savings and insurance, which the middle class has to protect itself against the random buffeting, which is inevitable in life. And, the aim of that dismantling has been to transfer income to the very wealthy and the CEOs and the Wall Street wizards.
The compensation of Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe is now obscene. The top 25 hedge fund managers in 2004 made more money than the CEOs of the Fortune 500, who were mostly grossly overpaid as well. Meanwhile, payday lenders replace the neighborhood savings and loan, and credit card companies routinely charge rates of 33%.
Much of the so-called housing bubble was, in fact, an orgy of predatory and fraudulent lending. A lot of ordinary people got caught up in that, hoping for something from nothing — con men don’t target the wholly honest person. But, the big bucks went to the Bear Stearns of the world.
We should not be bringing down the economy’s financial market around our own ears, but neither should we be held hostage by this nonsense. Proper regulation has to be the price of rescue. And, regulation ought to include greater efforts to protect ordinary folks from predation. Usury limits should be enacted. Payday lenders should be replaced by far less costly alternatives — like local savings banks.
The second gilded age enablers pretend any regulation over business is the second coming of the Soviet Union while miners in Utah die and Starbucks treats their employees like serfs
If the government is going to give welfare to the richest in the form of tax cuts and loopholes, how can we expect them to regulate greed in the form of predatory lending practices?