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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Caving Economy: How Did We Get Here?
I'm sure you'll agree that the complexities of how we ended up with a teetering world economy are difficult to absorb, even if one finds a source that presents factual analyses. I've been poking around trying to find understandable material and ran into this diary on Kos by Devilstower. I think it provides an excellent rundown, starting in 1982, of the major "deregulation" spurts concocted by Reagan, lobbyists, former Sen. Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan and John McCain, among others. These efforts resulted in the savings and loan fiasco, the Keating Five scandal, the Enron debacle, massive bank consolidation, insane speculation, the current mortgage crisis and many other horrors that helped bring us to this place.
Of course there have been a myriad of other factors in play here, but the diary explains how legislation pushed by certain "conservatives" purposefully opened the floodgates to rampant thievery, fraud, damaging speculation and nefarious money grubbing. It details the major milestones that helped to create the immoral economic landscape we've experienced since the "magic hand of the market" was decoupled from common sense rules and oversight.
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September 21, 2008 at 09:55 AM in Economy, Populism, John McCain, Republican Party | Permalink
Comments
After listening to the Sunday morning pundits, I think most are missing the most important cause of the Wall Street System Collapse.
The problem is that nobody is getting PAID at modern cost of living fair wage. They say that it was all those risky loans for houses etc. but the average educated/ skilled/ experienced working person feels entitled to hold a standard of living comparable or better than/to the previous generation.
The fact is that the middle class is taking unsustainable hits in depressed wages and job losses against a screaming cost of living increase for all goods and services including housing.
Some of the pundits want to blame the consumers for taking out more loans than they can expect to pay. Well, the common middle class person (producer)wants to sustain a middle class life-style (consume)and they feel entitled to it having worked hard and played by the rules. The only way to sustain the basics such as housing, cars, electronics/communications is to go into debt. It was the ONLY way and the economic system of greed (the Non-producers) MADE it the only way. That is, to go into debt (to them).
The system has feet of clay, that being the job base and wages commensurate with the cost of living.
The system is sick from the bottom up as a result of the greedy top down.
Posted by: qofdisks | Sep 21, 2008 12:44:20 PM
