Regulate Wall Street, For Our Own Good

Ben Stein Says We'll Be Paying The Costs For Their Misdeeds For A Long, Long Time

(CBS)  If you're astonished by all that's been happening on Wall Street, you're not the only one. Here's Contributor Ben Stein:

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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.

[mrtbob]

I just finished watching the Paulson / Bernanke Bailout briefing to congress and I need to update my overall opinion as to how all this will go, so is my part:
Me (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

[mitch5511]

I notice all the "borrow and spend" Republicans are not coming out of the woodwork decrying the mismanagement of the financial giants. Previously they sure were racking in the cash and reaping the benefits of corporate greed.

Can you say hypocrit?! Oh yeah, that''s the Republican mantra!

[noloyalisti]

So now we see the awful damage done by Ray Gun and his fellow Republicon privatizers. But I bet the hypocritical Cons want the government to bail their sorry butts out now. Their only purpose for government is to enrich their greedy friends.

Vote ALL the republicons out. Forever. They cannot be trusted in our government any longer.

[trohunt00]

This guy does dry eye commercials! Why does he have a column? Let''s remember one thing: Republicans, like John "I''m a deregulator" MCCain, drafted the legislation that led to the lessening or total eradication of regulation, which gave us the mortgage and now Financial meltdowns that we''re seeing. Yes Democrats were involved, but don''t act like every rebpublican mantra has been to de-regulate and let the market fix the problems. Well, the market fixed us alright. And now half the people in the country want to make a guy who believed in this philosophy, and had one of the main players of the dereg movement, Phil gramm as his financial advisor, the President! please tell me how?!?!

[johnpatrick9]

America has become a land not of the free and the brave but of FEAR AND GREED voiced as virtues.

[johnpatrick9]

...and the IDEOLOGY was basically REPUBLICAN vouched for by Mr DEREGULATION: John (BOOM BOOM) McCane.

[gunfighter51]

I just read a report in the British press detailing a 2.5 billion dollar bonus pool for the New York staff of Lehman Brothers.
And then I read here about liberals continuing to blame Bush for this fiasco.

[slattmandu]

What happened to our government protecting us from a greedy, money and power hungry capitalist(like John D. Rockfeller) from monopolizing a market(Oil)? What''s the difference between oil and lending money? And why did the government make it easier to give bad credit risks more credit? It must be they were lining their own pockets along the way.

[slattmandu]

What happened to our government protecting us from a greedy, money and power hungry capitalist(like John D. Rockfeller) from monopolizing a market(Oil)? What''s the difference between oil and lending money? And why did the government make it easier to give bad credit risks more credit? It must be they were lining their own pockets along the way.

[erasmus81]

"Lets all move to Canada."
Posted by scallywag8 at 01:03 AM : Sep 22, 2008

I''d prefer you didn''t.

[scallywag8]

That''s it!!! All poor people move to Canada and leave the fixing to the rich.

[scallywag8]

Lets all move to Canada.

[afmca]

If the Republicans do not pay the ultimate price for this dispictable behavior then there truly is no justice left in the world. Lloyd Bentsten - ex-REPUBLICAN Senator from Texas is the grandfather of this financial meltdown and all the Republicans afterwards preached, prodded, and tore down all the regulations that kept our money safe amd our investments secure. He is McCain''s financial advisor.

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!

[kazoodan]

So please don''''t be an angry snot..

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.

[jmurrieta11]

McCain is a male prostitute, a gigolo.

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!

[ubrew12]

An auto company builds cars. A toothpaste company builds toothpaste. What does WallStreet build? Through money trading, it finds the proper value of other companies and concerns. This is valuable because money can efficiently be invested where it''ll do the most good.

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.

[wogerwabbit]

"it''s always the rest of us who have to clean up the mess %u2014 and they walk away rich, of course."

There''s the problem, they should be stripped of their ill gotten gains.

[nfriedman46]

Mr. Stein seems to have flip-flopped since last March when, despite the looming crisis, he essentially said:

Despite all the bad buzz about subprime mortgages, the economy is strong and that the amount of foreclosures is small in relative terms.

[tascosa806]

We pledge allegiance
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.

[ubrew12]

We should not bailout WallStreet this time.

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).