Vot'em out
Audit the Fed Reserve and identify the people' institutions that did this (unlike the congresses bill to protect the Fed and not audit them) and then try to get some of the money back if possible.
It is better than just saying ... well Sh*& happens .. let's keep electing the same thieves to congress.
You keep inferring that the BUSH & OBAMA Tarp plans passed by the Pelosi and Reid elected representing the robber barons have saved the world - .. they saved a lot of rich people and institutions around the world .. leaving you .. American Tax payer to pay their bill. That bill will be paid eventually .. if not - then default .. and collapse of the economy and system - just like you say has been 'saved'.
I don't think we are doomed - but it will take some new people running things in DC to get out of this mess - and it doesn't include financial reform bills that GS endorses and just might mean that we find out from the Fed Reserve who they have been giving our money too - that only makes sense.
And is Ron Paul saying just trust Big Business to police itself going to fix it? Who do you trust more? Bernie Madoff and his ilk or Pelosi and her ilk? Focked either way.
We know who we can't trust .. don't we .. your current representatives in congress .. we hold these truths to be self evident.
I would say my level of trust for my current representatives and my level of trust for big business are almost even.
There is regulation in place now to police improprieties .. the problem is inept or paid off regulators - you can't blame Ron Paul or businesses for that ... you can blame the administrations that continue to allow it.
Then how do explain the business practices that preceded and led to the regulations and gov oversight? Child labor, deaths in the hundreds on the job, lead poisoning? Just hire someone else. ohh women don't earn as much as men.
Why do you think the people had to rise up and demand some controls of the robber barons?
It is not because Dupont and Rockefeller policed themselves, it is because they abused and exploited the working class, the very working class the constitution was supposed to protect.
Yes, we need to better enforce the rules we have, but I do blame business and capitalist greed for creating the problem, and I do not think Ron Paul calling for the elimination of all gov. oversight is going to make it better.
I far better trust the FDA to test new drugs
than I do Pfizer.
Pfizer and the FDA both have their place, just as God and Caesar did in the bible story. Same for employers and banks. Without them there would be no jobs except subsistence farming.
We had to bail out the banks and the rich people because we are tied to their fate. If they went all the way down the tubes we would rapidly follow them.
The solution isn't to get rid of the Golmans or the Pfizers of the world, the solution is checks and balances, the very thing conservatives insist that we MUST NOT DO.
Sure the people who run companies are gonna cheat if that option is open to them. They are only as honest as they have to be, to use one of my Mom's expressions. The purpose of the federal government in this setting is to keep a level playing field, protect workers, the consumers, the public at large, and the environment. Companies will not do this on their own. They will only do it if they are required to do so by a powerful enough entity. Think of how fast drivers would go on the highways with no cops around to give speeding tickets, to imagine what too much deregulation does for corporations.
And by the way, the reason drivers haven't been deregulated in this way is because there is no lobby group handing out cash demanding it.
So the options were not, bail out the banks or hold onto our tax money, the options were bail out the banks or we all go for a hard crash and burn.
Ron Paul is not in favor of no regulations
He is in favor of less regulation.
Ron Paul: Why More Regulation Makes Things Worse
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul568.html
I believe that if the regulators in place that were supposed to be watching Madoff or the other clown in Texas, the oil rig violations that were ignored - they would have been caught much sooner .. payoffs and bribes and probably too much bureaucracy prevent those people from doing their jobs .. so creating more layers and more rules will help them? These folks were not doing their jobs - and many want to give them more power .. what to feel safe but they won't be at all. Get folks that are capable in those jobs - that is the answer .. not make more rules. You got GS approves and their man in the WH Summers help create this legislation - what could go wrong?
Gramps .. who says the thing would have crashed and burned ... the very same guys that were driving us in the first place .. fool me once shame on you .. fool me twice . three times .. shame on me.
I refer you once again to Bush's comments when he asked for the first TARP bailout. He said that a number of economists had come to him saying that another Great Depression was a real threat if something aggressive wasn't done quickly. He used the phrase that he had to "abandon my Free Market point of view" to even consider TARP, but that it was necessary to prevent the kind of meltdown that conservatives are pretending was never a real possibility.
To do so would be to admit that what Bush did in the waning months of his presidency and what Obama has done since saved us from that fate. To admit this would be blasphemy for conservatives, which is why I believe they are so frantic to undermine the president. If he succeeds, it blows their whole economic philosophy. They would rather have another Depression than face that possibility, which is why the more intellectual conservatives (like Gingrich) are screaming that Obama is ruining America. What they mean is that he might ruin a precious part of their philosophy by proving it wrong.
Stay tuned, the stakes couldn't be higher and a lot of politicians are willing to cause a whole lot of damage to us to try to prove themselves right.
Gramps
Sucks, but what is the alternative, total global financial meltdown?
I think a lot of people are still in denial about how badly the financial sector screwed the pooch under the Asleep At The Switch regulatory policies of the previous administration.
Well maybe it wasn't asleep at the switch so much as the the ideology that the federal government shouldn't perform its Constitutionally required duty to protect investors, citizens, and the economy in general. They weren't asleep, they just didn't believe in doing their jobs.
So what are conservatives proposing now to fix the problems they created? More of the same policies that created the problem, for sure.