Sept. 21, 2008
Regulate Wall Street, For Our Own Good
Ben Stein Says We'll Be Paying The Costs For Their Misdeeds For A Long, Long Time
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Ben Stein says we should face Wall Street with a minimum amount of realism, knowing that when they screw up big time, it's always the rest of us who have to clean up the mess. (CBS)
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Play CBS Video Video Stein On Russia Contributor Ben Stein says that the U.S. is provoking Russia by unnecessarily getting involved with Georgia and Poland. Stein says the U.S. should realize its plate is full and "butt out."
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While we're all doing hosannas about the rescue package for the United States financial sector announced this past Friday, let's remember a few little things.
First of all, we came awfully close to Armageddon. We could have had a true catastrophe that would have had ruinous effects for years.
We have to be a heck of a lot less re-active and more pro-active next time. We don't want to be sitting around until it's one minute to Doomsday.
Second, this crisis - in which a vast number of the nation's banks and insurers were basically insolvent - did not happen by accident. It happened because of the government's policy of deregulation and lack of enforcement of laws on Wall Street happened.
Despite every bit of historical experience of Wall Street, the government trusted them to do the right thing.
Instead, of course, they did the things that made them the most money in the short run - issued oodles of subprime mortgages, and then made staggering bets on whether those mortgages would ever be paid off.
When, as might have been predicted, those mortgages defaulted en masse, the whole Wall Street edifice turned out to be a House of Cards. Many of the biggest, most famous names collapsed, and fear spread across the nation like oozing flood waters.
Let's learn from this. Wall Street has many fine men and women, but they need to be regulated for their own good - and for our own good.
Let's face Wall Street with a certain minimum amount of realism. Let's remember that when they screw up big time, it's always the rest of us who have to clean up the mess — and they walk away rich, of course.
Because this bailout is not free. We and our children and our children's children are going to be paying for it for a long, long time.
The government is already wildly in deficit, and now the deficit is going to be beyond imagining. Once again, we will find ourselves ever more in hoc to foreign countries who buy our debt.
Yes, we escaped the Grim Reaper this time. But it was close, and expensive as can be, and it did not have to happen at all.
Maybe next time we can look at the world as it is, not through the rose-colored, corrupt glasses of ideology.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 26 CommentsMe (taxpayer) loans to US government approximately $2,300 dollars to be repaid to me at some future date (unknown) plus interest in hopes that their bailout plan will work.
Signed, US taxpayer
Can you say hypocrit?! Oh yeah, that''s the Republican mantra!
Vote ALL the republicons out. Forever. They cannot be trusted in our government any longer.
And then I read here about liberals continuing to blame Bush for this fiasco.
Posted by scallywag8 at 01:03 AM : Sep 22, 2008
I''d prefer you didn''t.
Republicans said to trust Wall Street and we, our children, and our great-grandchildren will be paying the bills for the incompetence, immorality, and corruption. For decades the money men shifted money, not to make better companies, better products, or a better world; but for quick profits that diminished us. Huge mergers that made companies less competitive and less innovative; but left the money men with huge windfalls and the corporate execs with undeserved bonuses.
The Democratic Congress must ensure that these corporate execs are punished - no salaries; no bonuses; a ban on mergers; some real jail time; and banishment from the finacial sector of business for life. They do not deserve a second chance; they only deserve scorn and ridicule!
Vote in John and Sarah cause that''''s all we got
Posted by bgmusic at 05:24 PM : Sep 21, 2008
Don''t quit your day job.
You might think I''m referring to the fact that he''s bought and paid for by beer baroness Cindy?
No, McCain is a ho for the corporate financial elite.
Two weeks ago, the economy was "strong".
Now, the Billionaire class needs more of our money.
And "Maverick John" is right there, lube in hand, to make sure the passage of our money to the corporate financial elite is smooth and painless.
Smear it on, John!
How well does WallStreet do its job, when its largest banking firms can be functionally bankrupt and no one knows about it for years? Our entire financial sector has just been revealed to be worth $1 trillion less than we thought it was worth. What does it say about WallStreets ability to do its job (i.e. properly value companies), that something like this could happen? It tells me that we have a ''free market'' for all the other companies, and a closed-market-pyramid scheme for WallStreet bankers, who just got their payoff for being anti-''free market'' about their own industry.
There''s the problem, they should be stripped of their ill gotten gains.
Despite all the bad buzz about subprime mortgages, the economy is strong and that the amount of foreclosures is small in relative terms.
To the products
Of the United Corporations of America.
And to the markets
Which they control,
One economy
Under Bush
With profits for the rich
And taxes for the rest.
We should BUY up WallStreet. The government should become a partial owner of those companies exposed by the crisis, so that when they recover (and of course, some wont) we''ll be there to take their profits to pay back this generosity. Once we''ve been paid back (plus interest), we can divest our ownership and return WallStreet to private ownership.
The current bailout suggests to WallStreet that it can Party-Crazy and, in the end, Uncle Sam will pay for the damages. In the real world, such a benefactor would insist on some level of ownership over the debtor. A no-strings bailout just creates to ''moral hazard'' Bernanke has talked about, and it''ll happen again (cuz it was so profitable the last time).
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