As I wrote earlier, I was not and still not in favor of the current structure of the bailout of the banking and insurance corporations that have contributed to creating a global financial crisis. Transparency is still lacking and the persons that drove these companies into the ground have not been held accountable. If anything they are being rewarded while taxpayers pick up the tab.
We are still hearing from Washington that these institutions are “Just to Big to Let Fail!” I’m sorry but if they are too big to fail then they are too big to exist. It has been deregulation and the lack of enforcement of those few regulations left that has put us in this quagmire. I think most reading this article have seen the Jimmy Stewart’s classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”. What has happened is that our country is no longer Bedford Falls but we have become Potterville. In George Bailey’s nightmare Mr. Potter got what he wanted and that was to eliminate the Bailey Savings and Loan because then he wouldn’t have any competition and then he controlled all the wealth and the town.
When former Treasury Secretary Paulson gave a $125 billion bailout to nine banks to include his old firm Goldman Sachs we the taxpayer have been ripped off. The actual value of those nine banks was about $62.5 billion if we bought their stock on the open market. So our generous Mr. Paulson gave them a little extra bonus with taxpayer’s money. You do the math. We should have bought them up to break them apart and sell off the good parts back to the private sector and dissolve the toxic parts, which in reality is just a small part but who actually did most of the damage.
Unfortunately Obama seems to want to get back to more oversight but I still don’t see a major change in policy with the current Treasury Secretary. We need to start breaking up these “We Control All” Corporations and get back to basics and put competition back into the free enterprise equation. Let’s take one company that is a mega conglomerate and see where General Electric’s (GE) tentacles go:
They own NBC Universal which is media, GE Capital – Financial Services and Insurance, technology from nuclear reactors and turbines to medical equipment, military and commercial aircraft engines, lighting manufacturing and pipeline industry products and the list goes on and on which would fill up most of this column.
I say if you’re in the banking industry, you are a bank and not a weapons contractor. If you issue a mortgage you own that mortgage until the mortgagee pays you back. The bundling and selling off mortgages where some should never have been issued in the first place must stop. If you can’t sell off a bad mortgage, maybe bankers will be more responsible when they can’t sell off their liability to other investors or taxpayers? The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act which was enacted to bring oversight to the banking industry during the Great Depression must be put back into law. President Clinton with the major push coming from the former Senator Phil Gramm (R) and Congressman Jim Leach (R) repealed the law 1999. We now see the tragic results.
What I don’t want to hear from the party that preaches they are against regulations and want more tax cuts is they have a better answer to our problems. I think the recent four million people who are now unemployed in the last four months would be happy to pay taxes if they were still getting a pay check and maybe not losing their home. The hole that was dug by those who controlled the past eight years never questioned deficit spending and who never questioned when two wars and Katrina were never factored into the federal budget. All of a sudden they get deficit religion? I’m sorry but they had their chance and that dog just won’t hunt. And Democrats like Christopher Dodd who accepts campaign donations from the very financial corporations he is now in charge of overseeing, shame on you too!
