Anyone who has worked in a large organization - or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” - is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.
You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.
The financial events of the last seven months, and especially the past few weeks, have convinced all but a few diehards that the U.S. financial system needs major reform. Otherwise, we’ll lurch from crisis to crisis - and the crises will get bigger and bigger.
The rescue of Bear Stearns, in particular, was a paradigm-changing event.
Traditional, deposit-taking banks have been regulated since the 1930s, because the experience of the Great Depression showed how bank failures can threaten the whole economy. Supposedly, however, “non-depository” institutions like Bear didn’t have to be regulated, because “market discipline” would ensure that they were run responsibly.
When push came to shove, however, the Federal Reserve didn’t dare let market discipline run its course. Instead, it rushed to Bear’s rescue, risking billions of taxpayer dollars, because it feared that the collapse of a major financial institution would endanger the financial system as a whole.
And if financial players like Bear are going to receive the kind of rescue previously limited to deposit-taking banks, the implication seems obvious: they should be regulated like banks, too.
The Bush administration, however, has spent the last seven years trying to do away with government oversight of the financial industry. In fact, the new plan was originally conceived of as “promoting a competitive financial services sector leading the world and supporting continued economic innovation.” That’s banker-speak for getting rid of regulations that annoy big financial operators.
To reverse course now, and seek expanded regulation, the administration would have to back down on its free-market ideology - and it would also have to face up to the fact that it was wrong. And this administration never, ever, admits that it made a mistake.
Thus, in a draft of a speech to be delivered on Monday, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declares, “I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil.”
And sure enough, according to the executive summary of the new administration plan, regulation will be limited to institutions that receive explicit federal guarantees - that is, institutions that are already regulated, and have not been the source of today’s problems. As for the rest, it blithely declares that “market discipline is the most effective tool to limit systemic risk.”
The administration, then, has learned nothing from the current crisis. Yet it needs, as a political matter, to pretend to be doing something.
So the Treasury has, with great fanfare, announced - you know what’s coming - its support for a rearrangement of the boxes on the org chart. OCC, OTS, and CFTC are out; PFRA and CBRA are in. Whatever.
Will rearranging these boxes make any difference? I’ve been disappointed to see some news outlets report as fact the administration’s cover story - the claim that lack of coordination among regulatory agencies was an important factor in our current problems.
The truth is that that’s not at all what happened. The various regulators actually did quite well at acting in a coordinated fashion. Unfortunately, they coordinated in the wrong direction.
For example, there was a 2003 photo-op in which officials from multiple agencies used pruning shears and chainsaws to chop up stacks of banking regulations. The occasion symbolized the shared determination of Bush appointees to suspend adult supervision just as the financial industry was starting to run wild.
Oh, and the Bush administration actively blocked state governments when they tried to protect families against predatory lending.
So, will the administration’s plan succeed? I’m not asking whether it will succeed in preventing future financial crises - that’s not its purpose. The question, instead, is whether it will succeed in confusing the issue sufficiently to stand in the way of real reform.
Let’s hope not. As I said, America’s financial crises have been getting bigger. A decade ago, the market disruption that followed the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management was considered a major, scary event; but compared with the current earthquake, the L.T.C.M. crisis was a minor tremor.
If we don’t reform the system this time, the next crisis could well be even bigger. And I, for one, really don’t want to live through a replay of the 1930s.
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and a regular New York Times columnist. His most recent book is The Conscience of a Liberal.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Paul Krugman writes:
“The question, instead, is whether it will succeed in confusing the issue sufficiently to stand in the way of real reform.”
Given the Bush “administration’s” record (Healthy Forests, Clear Skies Initiative, No Child Left Behind, all oxymoronic), the short answer to the above question is yes. Let’s hope that the Dems in Congress will talk the Bush proposal to death. Real reform will have to wait for the new Democratic (I hope) administration (although I don’t hold much hope for that either, given that both Clinton and Obama owe millions in payback to the financial industry).
This is the same method they use in “managing the war”, also. Rearrange the boxes and lines and fudge the numbers to keep any real changes from happening, while the same old MI-complex keeps on keepin’ on!
Brace yourself Paul, because with bush in charge of the us gov’t’s response to a financial crisis the 1930s will seem like a time of prosperity. How much value has the us dollar already lost? What is the real rate of inflation? How many things does us industry actually produce, and are there buyers for those goods?
This New York Times writer didn’t mention it but do you remember, The Bush government did the same thing with the US spy departments.
Remember back in 2004, what Bush said about the 9/11 failures and the fantasies of a nuclear causus belli in the case of Iraq? Bush said, never mind that we were asleep at the switch before 9/11. Never mind that we lied in the state of the union speech, Never mind that we broke the UN treaty which outlaws wars of aggression. Bush said the problem was that America needed an “intelligence czar”.
All Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional behaviour doesn’t need to be addressed now, you see, because congress has agreed to rearrange the organogram.
I seem to remember similar practices of rearrangement around FEMA following the Katrina fiasco. I expect this financial kabuki theatre attempt to obscure the folly of deregulation will follow the same lines.
Dilbert. Yeah. Old boy business model meets government. Let’s re-do Org Charts, Reporting Structures, Work Quantification Methodology. Let’s all get a black belt in 6Sigma. Wow!! Keeps management looking busy. Bides time. Attempts to distract the rest of us from the fact that the clueless Wizard of Oz is running things, and getting paid damn well for it. The winged monkeys too.
As they restack the economic deck, Will they be able to make believers of us –again? Hmm.
“The Image — A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America” by Daniel J. Boorstin (Vantage)
if we going to practice and preach deregulation, or free markets, then lets ‘deregulate’ the whole lot of it, get rid of all laws and let crooks and drug dealers and armed citizens and local militias run amok and let it all sort itself out . . . oh right, that Anarchy thing . . . .
so what’s the difference then, between free markets and anarchy??
maybe just the old famous double standard, anarchy for wall st, police state for main st.
Of course the new organization will work fine, just like reorganizing all of those agengy`s under the Dept of Homeland Security. These guys really know what they are doing , and our country is just about to start prospering in time for the Bush legacy to be written. Good times are right around the country and there will be a chicken in every pot.
riverbird,
Good post. The Republican position is that government’s only purpose is to protect the wealth of the elite from the rabble, including the rabble in other countries, while helping the elite squeeze every bit of labor and value out of the rabble.
You can’t play Three Card Monty unless you keep moving the cards around. And the best way to instill confidence is to bend the corner of one of the cards, so that people think they’re on to something and going to win.
Krugman is right as usual, and “riverbird” wrote a beautiful tagline on this thread: “Anarchy for Wall Street, police state for Main Street.”
Five stars!
We should not be green-lighting the bailout of financial institutions by debating how to regulate them. This just further entangles government with these businesses.
Instead, we should be reinstituting the banking reforms of the 1930’s which separated brokerage houses, insurance companies and banks; and separated commercial banks from investment banks. These entities are all regulated under fraud statutes, etc. or need to be.
Then, we need legislation/a constitutional amendment to the effect that no business enterprise will be considered “too big to fail”.
Then, we can let free market discipline work.
>>free market discipline
is an oxymoron without personal discipline, and crooks are crooks.
Krugman wrote: The question, instead, is whether it will succeed in confusing the issue sufficiently to stand in the way of real reform.
That’s not the intent of the reorg. Like the “surge” in Iraq, the true purpose of this reorganization is to sustain the appearance of action for long enough to let the administration dump the problem on President 44.
We really need some way to punish ex-presidents for the hugely irresponsible actions they took while in office. Bush has done far more damage to the U.S. than all the terrorists in history, combined, have ever managed to do. Perhaps we can waterboard him. He can’t possibly object, can he, since he doesn’t believe it is torture.
By the way, Krugman did the best job I’ve ever seen at explaining the social security trust fund on his NY Times blog a couple of days ago. In a nutshell, Krugman explains that during the Reagan administration, the poor and middle class agreed to up their funding of social security (with the rich either contributing their small share or none at all in the case of investment income) and in return the elite rich agreed this truly was a trust fund. It’s more than obvious that when Bush tried to privatize social security, he ran into a wall.
I guess I just like to poke fun at all the concerned citizens, but go here:
http://goto.votenader.org/dm?id=6433DB04428CE04FEB059288FF5A4CE0A34B7D50FA2BAE0C
So you are not too strained:
http://www.votenader.org/issues/
Nader
Unfortunately, Prof Krugman, the return of the 1930s is inevitable. And the way it will return will make the 30’s look more like the 1950’s version of a horror movie and the new will be more like a recent remake. There will be more blood, gore and flying guts everywhere this time compared to the previous version. We as a country didn’t owe $10 TRILLION to the fed and every other country in the world back then. We weren’t so stupid as to outsource our manufacturing and lower our own wages by decades back in the 30’s.
But it WAS the republicans and the gilded age that gave us that depression, and it is the republicans and Reagan’s Alzheimer’s economics that will give us the upcoming disaster. And until we start demanding that those who have robbed us blind over the last 27 years start paying that back, we will still be getting the shaft and nothing will get better. Just deeper..
This upcoming depression may very well cause the next big war as every country that loaned us money just to watch us default on it comes calling en masse looking for their payback. And STILL there are people in this country who think that W is doing a great job. Go figure…
Krugman’s such a whore for free markets! He claims to have “reformed”. LOL.
Deran,
That was an incredibly creative and illumnating post. The way you took down Krugman’s arguments point by point was exhilarating.
Are you available to teach my three year old how to debate?
Markets, free or otherwise, are a poor way to meet needs simply because they
don’t.
Once upon a time taxation without representation” became the basis for revolutionary struggle, but now no one seems to care that Bernanke & Paulson bail out their friends at Bear Stearns and hand the bill to the tax payers who are currently paying interest only on the national debt ( to the friends of Bernanke, Paulson, Bush, et al )and will soon be unable even to meet the interest payments.
These people have turned the taxpayers into subprime borrowers.
jlocke references 911, which is very appropriate. Notice how Paulson is anxious to avoid placing blame: “I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil.” The 911 Commission begins its report by exonerating any and all players of blame.
“…lack of coordination among regulatory agencies was an important factor in our current problems.” It wasn’t the failure of the Executive, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA etc etc, it was lack of coordination.
We live in a time of complete criminal impunity. Corruption is king. The government murders its own people, then picks their pockets, and the NY Times follows behind to shoot the survivors.
It’s my opinion that this whole “financial crisis” is engineered to kill the USD in order to usher in the North American Dollar. You can either believe that the big players in the economy are stupid and therefore triggered this crash, OR, you can believe that they’re smart and it’s done by design.
Why not just look back to the last huge crisis that devastated working people, not McCain’s S&L scam (save that for later) but the “Big Reforms” that came after Bush’s pal Ken Lay screwed the people with Enron? What has been done, what is different since all that? NOTHING—i.e., people who fundamentally believe in the depravity of human beings (like good Christians) want the “honor system,” to leave the foxes to regulate the hen-house once again….
Here’s a novel f**cking idea:
How about we, you know, arrest a few dozen of the “elite” who lied and stole? Because that’s the one “market discipline” leveler that no longer exists nor is dared to be spoken.
Severe punishment. Publicly. And in mass quantity.
Let’s start there. Oh, and, don’t forget to seize all assets immediately, and start paying back the victims right away.
elmysterio: “It’s my opinion that this whole “financial crisis” is engineered to kill the USD in order to usher in the North American Dollar. You can either believe that the big players in the economy are stupid and therefore triggered this crash, OR, you can believe that they’re smart and it’s done by design.”
I have been telling people for at least the last three years that this government is going to either ALLOW on ENGINEER a period of hyperinflation. This way they will be able to pay off the 10 trillion dollar national debt with worthless dollars. Of course this will destroy savings and pension plans, but so what? The “engineers” have “got theirs” and they regard it as your own fault that you might not “have yours”. Done by design, indeed!
AFTER THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY RAPED AND PILLAGED THE ENTIRE US ECONOMY….AFTER THEY MADE THEIR MILLIONS….AFTER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RAIDED THE US TREASURY…AFTER THE BIG BANKS AND BIG LENDERS GOT AWAY WITH MURDER…..FOR 7 1\2 YEARS NOW IT’S TIME FOR REFORM ! ONCE AGAIN BUSH IS JUST TRYING TO COVER HIS ASS AND HIS CRONIES
I WOULD LIKE TO SEND THIS TO BUSH…….YOU TRIED TO KILL MEDICARE…BUT YOU DIDN’T…..YOU TRIED TO KILL SOCIAL SECURITY…. BUT YOU DIDN’T …YOU TRIED TO KILL MEDICAID….BUT YOU DIDN’T…YOU TRIED TO TAKE AWAY ALL OF OUR CILVIL LIBERTIES IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM…BUT YOU DIDN’T…YOU TRIED TO BLAME EVERYTHING ON SOMEONE OR SOMETHING ESLE….BUT YOU COULDN’T…..YOU TRIED TO KILL THE AMERICAN SPIRIT OF THE CONSITIUTION…BUT YOU DIDN’T…YOU TRIED TO USE FEAR AS A WEAPON…BUT IT’S NOT WORKING ANYMORE…….YOU’RE TRYING TO STEAL IRAQ’S OIL …BUT YOU CAN’T….YOU SAID YOU HAD PROOF THAT IRAQ AND IRAN HAD WMD…BUT YOU CAN’T PROVE IT WITHOUT A DOUBT …..YOU ARE TRYING TO KILL THE INTERNET…BUT YOU CAN’T…….AFTER 7 1\2 YEARS OF TRYING TO KILL AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT….YOU HAVE FAILED !!!!!!!
I thought Bush’s plan was to centralize regulatory power so the financial institutions would have a single ‘goto’ corrupt agency head, instead of having to deal with multiple corrupt individuals. Economy of scale and all that.
It’s said that Bush’s “plan” has been in the works for a year, and is being rolled out (as a surprise) now because the climate might be amenable (Shock Doctrine, anyone?)
This is not a “grand compromise” like supposedly was to be the “comprehensive” immigration reform that failed. We need not package together a whole bunch of unrelated stuff and pronounce it “good”. Congress can very well pick and choose a bit. For instance, it’s doubtful that letting any insurance companies bypass state regulations and operate under a federal charter is useful at all to people UNLESS LIBERALS WRITE THE REGS–which ain’t the case here so far.
It’s also doubtful that a federal government writing licensure standards for who can play in the mortgage game is useful, WHEN WHAT IS REALLY NEEDED IS STANDARDS ON WHAT CLAUSES CAN AND CANNOT BE IN MORTGAGES. Again, you need the liberals writing the regs, not the Bush Administration.
My guess is that much of the details in 200+ pages are the Republican lobbyists trying to get reforms they like before the Obama folks arrive to promote some real reforms.
Dilbert, indeed. Probably more like the work of Catbert, the Evil HR Director from the same comic strip.
‘Hank’ Paulson’s stage performance this morning did not have the dramatic effect of FED Chair Charles Mitchell rushing onto the floor of the NYSE in 1929 and shouting that “there is organized support from the banks’ as he placed ‘buys’ for $10M in stocks.
Fortunately, neither will Paulson’s staged performance be as effective as FDR’s in “saving capitalism from itself.”
After all, one must keep in mind that Paulson’s pledge of financial reform “focused on the public good”, as he said, comes from the key financial member of the Bush administration, which Al Gore, in his fabulous new book, “The Assault on Reason” accurately characterized as a “radical right-wing corporatist ‘faction’ which holds in utter contempt the very concept that such a thing as ‘a public interest’ even exists.”
No, Paulson’s cheap melodrama will not save crony capitalism from itself again — and it is probably only intended to try to save the ‘capital markets’ in any case.
The Bush administration’s ‘Vichy’ façade hiding this corporatist Empire, and arguably the corporatist Democrats also, don’t give a damn about ‘the public interest’ of average Americans, and would be delighted if they could only save the few tens of thousands of elitist investors in New York City, Greenwich, and the Hamptons, who control their precious ‘capital markets’, while watching the vast working-class neighborhoods and factories of the US disappear.
As the ruling-elite class of Britain says more honestly than their guileful American peers, “Bloody good show, Hank”. “Capital idea, Paulson. Capital idea!”
Yes, the only idea that Paulson revealed is just that, the ‘capital idea’ of maintaining American’s ‘capital markets’ while the rest of our country, our economy, and our population of average citizens decays to third world standards.
But fortunately, this ‘corporatist faction’ (as Gore tags it), this ‘corporatist Empire’ (as I call it) hiding behind the two-party ‘Vichy’ faux government that has almost totally captured our country, is not going to make a successful Willie Sutton get-away from the bank this time.
No, the good people of the US recognize crooks, even those wearing three-piece suits and talking the kind of phony economic jive that’s only based on zero-sum, negative externality ‘gaming’ of the system. No, economic benefits don’t ‘trickle down’ hill, and we now recognize that the warm feeling on our leg is just elitist crooks’ trickle.
If Paulson, Bush and the like are fondly envisioning acquiescent, patient, and well-behaved soup-lines queuing up for GD II as they did in Great Depression I they are due for a rude awakening. Paraguay is not far enough away, George. Think more in terms of ‘thumbs’ and ‘rope’.
Banking regulations = deck chairs.
US economy = Titanic.
Offshore bank accounts of Corporations and the psychotically wealthy = lifeboats.
Common citizen of the US = passengers left to freeze and drown in the water.
Did I miss anything?
J LOCKE & CRUXPUPPY: Good posts.
I have a very interesting male friend who is possibly highly clairvoyant. In any case, he told me to watch the news about a likely national trucker’s strike. He reminded me that the average trucker–especially the independent ones–can spend close to $1000 filling up his truck these days, and many are NOT breaking even due to the high price of diesel fuel. He said IF this strike gets underway, and if they get help from those on loading docks or other connected unions, we would see the food disappear on our supermarket shelves in 3 days, and gas difficult to come by. This may be a more immediate phenomenon than the recession becoming a depression, due to so much smoke and mirrors keeping things to APPEAR as solid until probably after the election.
The astrological influences show a very severe fiscal reality check beginning at the end of 2009 and well into 2010. I think it’s being engineered to “fall” on democratic “watch,” even though some like Rich M and Co Marc have made it abundantly clear that there is something like a good cop/bad cop kabuki theater at work between the “TWO” parties that makes it seem that the democrats give back what the Repubs manage to confiscate, but the ultimate progression is towards the right, and that those who have the supply are free to make the demands. The rest of us pay the price.
Krugman, a devout Hillarite, doesn’t point out that The Clinton Administration laid much of the groundwork for the current collapse, and yet Hillary is calling for the architects of their neoliberal debacle, Greenspan and Rubin, to solve it.
AlexLawyer - If HRC (gods forbid) becomes president, be prepared for nothing less than four more years of neo-con Bush policies. In drag.
There really needs to be a lot more understanding of what is actually happening in what appears to be a great huge complex system. At its base it is quite straightforward, and the biggest con of all time. Banketeering - how the banks have been stealing trillions from you, and the tap is still running http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box01-money.html
On May 23, 1933 Congressman McFadden brough impeachment charges against the Federal Reserve Board, accusing them of a conspiracy to transfer US financial resources to foreigner and international bankers (1929 crash). He then suffered 2 assassination attempts before food “poisoning” killed him (suspected to have been poisoned).
Congressman Patman was Chairman of the House Banking Committee and lobbied hard for passage of a bill that would allow Congress to do a complete audit of the Fed in 1972. He was then removed from the Chairmanship following passage of an extremely diluted bill that limits to audit to pencil counts and executive expense accounts. They said he was too old, he said it was because he was too “smart”. Mess with the Fed and you get Spitzered or worse.
This is a manufactured crisis like all other financial crisis. Thats the purpose of the Fed today, to allow conditions that cause bubbles which are then popped. At the end of the day, the bubble makers walk away bigger and stronger, having absorbed the few casualities with help by Fed bailouts, and the little guy gets poorer. In response to the crisis that got the little guy all hot and bothered, since they are poorer, new regulation are proposed and then adopted which give the regulators like the Fed who were responsible more power, with strings attached that will allow new bubbles to be created. And the cycle continues while the brain dead keep looking for the hole in their pocket to figure out how his money is disappearing, not even suspecting his pocket is being picked.
Let’s not forget that the little guy makes the rules. The little guy is de-coupling himself from the predominant economic system and participating in the grassroots formation of a new social and economic vision based upon sustainability and survival. The old system will crumble simply because the life blood of youth and vigor and spirit have been removed from it. The new vision is in it’s formative and liquid state as new ideas and lifeways are tested against reality. Unfortunately we will have to walk through the darkness before emerging into the new crystallized vision. It’s a long road so find happiness in today where you can.
To me the most revealing and bizarre aspect of this affair is that Hank Paulson is proposing a “reform” that he admits would not have averted the current crisis and will not prevent a similar one in the future. Which raises the question: why is he even proposing it?
Equally revealing and bizarre is the fact that no one in the MSM has confronted Paulson on that point.
MiMiCcS: ” … the purpose of the Fed today, to allow conditions that cause bubbles which are then popped. At the end of the day, the bubble makers walk away bigger and stronger, having absorbed the few casualities with help by Fed bailouts, … ”
Yup. Big Money that created and popped the bubble buys up the foreclosed assets at pennies on the dollar. Inflation means NOTHING to them because they own the hard assets. And, as you stated, this has been the specific purpose of the Fed since inception. And now they are to be rewarded by being handed even more “regulatory oversight” so they can build and pop even BIGGER bubbles. The Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets, aka the “plunge protection team” is spending your tax dollars to pump the stock market. Its a classic pump and dump scheme. NOTE: The SEC recently removed the rule that a stock price had to show an up tick before one could sell that stock short. Now one can sell short at any time. Watch for the following: Market rises and rises the market bubble) until the PPT decides its time to pull the trigger. When the market begins to dive, at some point, instead of using YOUR money to prop the market up as they have been all along, they will allow it to CRASH. BIG MONEY will sell short BIGTIME, adding to the crash. And once again, after all the “little” “investors” are all wiped out, BIG MONEY will step in and buy up all the assets at pennies on the dollar. They will cover their short sales for pennies on the dollar as well. They will hold all the hard assets AND all the cash. Its coming. I hope I will still be able to afford Alpo. I’d hate to have to eat those lesser store brands.
This is “their” idea of reform:
“Another one of the blueprint’s immediate goals is to ease how the Securities and Exchange Commission approves securities, such as mortgage-backed bonds, so financial firms do not try to elude the agency’s oversight.”
IOW, if we make bank robbing legal, the robbers won’t have to waste so much time trying to avoid security cameras and alarms and stuff.
Here’s another way to help financial firms not try to elude the SEC’s oversight - ARREST THE MOTHERF**KERS, perp walk them on FOX, fry them in open court, and drop them into a Supermax for 10-20 years.
Removing oversight and transferring taxpayer billions directly into their personal pockets after they got caught picking ours just doesn’t sound like the way to encourage “market discipline” to me…
D n G — Excellent comment of our pending transmogrification:
The knowledge of promised illumination is far better than the mere hope of finding a path in the dark.
Thank you for these wise words.
Namaste
Porches and Titchforks, far and teathers.
Stock up now before the rush. Wait till Joe Sixpack discovers that his pension is gone and there’s no gas for the ski boat. It’ll get ugly then.
Merek suggested “That’s not the intent of the reorg. Like the “surge” in Iraq, the true purpose of this reorganization is to sustain the appearance of action for long enough to let the administration dump the problem on President 44.”
An ordinary person looking to foist off the problem would doubtless take this approach. But are these ordinary people? And do they see this as a problem, or rather as an opportunity?
In this case, I suspect a different tack. What we are seeing here is the end game is the greatest swindle in US history. Paulson has already rushed the US treasury and the resources of the Federal Reserve to his Wall Street chums, and is now using the current “crisis” as an opportunity to further erode the ability of the Federal government to regulate their activities.
Using public resources to quench the crisis is absolutely fundamental to the swindle. It is, in fact, the end game — the critical step that underpins the entire scam — the transfer of the wealth of the American middle class to Wall Street banks and wealthy investors courtesy of the Federal Government.
The current policy of aiding the wealthy while ignoring those facing forclosure has the added advantage of stripping those who have been marginalized by the scam of their assets and making those assets available to those with money at fire sale prices. And, of course, it hardly ends there. The government bailout will ultimately appear as additional national debt, which represents a claim — largely by wealthy people and investment organizations — on the future revenues of the US government, otherwise known as our taxes. And let’s not forget the interest on that debt. The brilliance and audacity of this swindle is that it robs not only us but future generations as well.
For Paulson and his buddies, it just doesn’t get any better than this.
WmC April 1st, 2008 8:09 am,
This “reform package” that Paulson is touting was in the making long before this current financial crisis was public. It is the usual oxymoron that the Administration is so good at creating, the so called “regulation package” is actually another Republican attack on banking regulation and anything that has the stamp of “new deal” on it.