On Apr 3, 2008, at 12:10 PM, Sean Andrews wrote:
> This seems to be another such moment and I think people are looking to
> you to say something that we aren't already hearing on the evening
> news--especially since I, for one, have been listening carefully to
> you for several years predicting just this outcome
Well I said this not all that long ago:
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Turmoil2.html>
Since the expenditure of public funds is probably inevitable, it would be very nice, if the public actually got something in return— though the precedents for this are not encouraging. At the very least, the financial system badly needs to be re-regulated to prevent the sort of wild speculative adventures that have become routine in recent decades. Though Wall Street types will complain that that will hurt them, or assert that regulation is impossible, these claims should be studiously ignored. This whole boom–bust–bailout cycle has gotten very wasteful and very dangerous. It would have been nice if the dot.com and Enron debacles had led to some sort of re-regulation, but they didn’t. This time around, the hangover is even worse than the last go-round. What might the next one look like without some sort of re-regulation? Some people in Washington are starting to talk about this, but without serious popular pressure, the measures are likely to be very mild stuff indeed.