Wall Street And The Media Are Trying To Make Us Forgot Who Started The Financial Crash

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/140123/wall_st._and_the_media_are_trying_to_make_us_forget_who_started_the_financial_crash

Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

By Les Leopold, AlterNet. Posted May 20, 2009.

We're at the moment Wall Street has been waiting for: The time where we begin to forget who brought the economy down.

It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on.

Wall Street is praying that we forget how they broke open the Treasury vault to the tune of trillions in loan guarantees, subsidies and interest free money in addition to the more highly publicized TARP funds -- the largest transfer of wealth since African-American slaves built the South. It would be nice if we forgot about proposed wage caps on bankers. It would be nice if we stopped talking about ridiculous reforms and regulations that might prevent banker and hedge funds operators from walking off with hundreds of millions in private booty.

- snip -

Are we really going to forget? That depends on the severity of the crisis and it depends on our ability to understand it. Some see green shoots all around. (I would like to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge) I’m no soothsayer so I can’t tell you how long this crisis will last, or how much carnage it will cause, or even if the green shoots will be killed by all the financial toxic waste still polluting our economy. But I can help us remember its key characteristics: This crisis was the result of a total failure of financial markets. It wasn’t caused by consumers taking on too much debt, or a housing bubble, or uncompetitive industries. It was caused by financial markets run wild. It wasn’t caused by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or big government. It was caused because our leaders believed free-markets could run on their own.

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[Skittles]

1. I'll never forget it was repuke bastards

no INDEED

[FrenchieCat]

2. Just like they want to forget that Bush & Co. didn't keep us safe.....

even when they insist!

[Solly Mack]

3. a regulated K&R

[dmosh42]

4. Jim "the puppet" Cramer was already on saying...

the gasoline prices rising was due to the Chinese. Meantime, nothing has changed in the commodities markets, and we can be sure Morgan, Stanley and the other hedge funds are using that 'TARP' money to drive up the futures markets.

[unblock]

5. i wish he'd put the blame explicitly on republicans and washington's "business is always right" crew

his focus seems to be blaming the financial markets directly.

yes, certainly the jerks that turned bear stearns into a 200-1 leveraged hedge fund, betting the farm that real estate wouldn't drop half a percent, screwed up royally, and of course there were others.

but at the end of the day, they were only responding to the idiotic incentives that washington heaped on them. republicans and their "business is always right" ideology carried the day (and yes, too many democrats played along) and they cut away the sensible regulations we had, even those born in the wake of the great contraction 1929-1933. moreover, the bushies didn't even enforce the regulations they had.

the fact is, irresponsibly deregulate ANY industry and they'll run hog wild and screw things up. that's a call for responsible regulation, properly enforced, which the government should be doing for ALL industries, from financial markets to health insurance to sausage-making.

[Wednesdays]

6. It's Clinton's fault...no, wait...it's all Nancy Pelosi's fault...

Yeah, that's it...she KNEW all the shit was gonna hit the fan, and yet she said nothing. Burn her at the stake!

K&R

[snot]

7. k&r'd

[Hissyspit]

8. .