Fair question, I'll give it a shot.
Two things to start.
First thing is we need to get to the bottom of what caused the financial mess and why. There seems to be a lot of theories bantering around and conclusions already arrived at that the free market was the problem and it needs to be regulated. That may be fine for some who desire to use the crisis to enact liberal economic policies, but without a thorough examination, it's just an opinion. The second is that we can't rely on Congress to conduct the investigation.
Congress has declined to even schedule a hearing involving two major entities involved in the meltdown - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With such market power concentrated in the hands of only two companies, and those companies so closely connected to the party in power, a fair and thorough accounting is not possible.
We need an independent commission. Something like a "Mortgage Bailout Commission" to collect evidence and issue a report explaining what caused the meltdown, then recommend reforms to stop it from happening again.
The commission should include members who have experience in the markets, and the power to compel testimony. Those members should be appointed by the president and bi-partisan leaders in Congress, with no more than half selected by any one party. It's time for some real oversight of our congressional overseers, instead of assuming they're the answer to all of our problems.
The Obama administration has largely abandoned this approach and already decided on what needs to be done, both short and long term. Basically, spend, spend and keep spending until things turn around. Instead of getting to the bottom and finding out the root cause of the problem(s), they are using the crisis to gain more and more control of private industries and placing those industries under defacto government control. Similar to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and look where that got us.
If lack of regulation alone were the problem, why are European financial institutions going through similar turmoil, they were far more regulated than U.S. financial institutions, some are even owned by the government.
Seems the root cause of this problem is bad housing loans. But no one has bothered to bring the Executives of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac under oath to ask them some tough questions.
That's in contrast with the 1987 stock market crash, where President Reagan formed the Brady Commission within two weeks to investigate causes and recommend reforms.
Yet today, we're spending many trillions of taxpayer dollars, a generational theft of wealth to apply toward a solution, when no one really knows what the problem was. |
