"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."Yeah, that worked really well over the last decade, didn't it, Spense? The banks ran flawlessly, the economy grew and the Bush tax cuts guaranteed prosperity for all!
The "regulators exist to serve the regulated", otherwise known as the "bureaucratic Stockholm syndrome" is why the Minerals Management Service ignored the shoddy practices of oil drillers such as BP, which is why, in part, the Gulf of Mexico got an unscheduled crude oil bath last summer. That mindset allowed the banksters to set up mass gambling dens (otherwise known as "derivatives markets") and to engage in shoddy lending practices. The federal regulators, from the willful blindness of the Federal Reserve to the sheer ineptness of the Comptroller of the Currency, bypassed state regulators and allowed the banksters to do whatever they felt like.
Which is one of the reasons why we have 10% unemployment and an economy that, other than on Wall Street, is sputtering along.
Spenser doesn't get it and he never will. Republicans particularly seem to be driven by ideology, not by reality. The banksters will steal again and again. There will be food companies that willfully produce salmonella-tainted eggs or contaminated meats, because engaging in best practices for cleanliness and sanitation are expensive and because the regulators, which get cut off at the knees by congressman like Spenser Bachus, can't do their jobs.
Because, as ol' Spense sees it, the problem is with the regulators and every company and every bank can be trusted to do the right thing at all times. Which is what his ideology tells him to believe.
(H/T)
I read a great line recently. Something to this effect: Capitalism, left to its own devices, will take and take until there is nothing left to take.
ReplyDeleteBusiness need regulation to save it from itself. And we need business to be regulated to save us from its excesses, as well.
I'd say the banking disasters of the last couple of years are a perfect example of why we NEED regulation. Real regulation. Enforced regulation.
I don't care about ideology, just about what works. Communism doesn't work. The kind of crony capitalism exemplified by this GOP crook's quote doesn't work. Both are all about ideological purity rather than about pragmatic realism. Only pragmatic realism will get us out of our current situation... sadly, it appears that our ruling class is bound and determined to impose solutions that might in some universe, somewhere (where undoubtedly the unicorns are purple and cotton candy grows on trees) but clearly have proven not to work in *this* universe, where unicorns are a myth and cotton candy grows on carny spindles.
ReplyDeleteThing is, the collapse of the Soviet Union shows us what happens when ideology trumps reality...
- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin