Perhaps the social security administration which delivers health insurance -in effect- for about 15% of what the private sector charges. health professionals would remain private or public as is now the case. I sure would not want AIG or Citibank , Bear stearns, Lehman . WAMU, Countrywide or Enron involved. I also would not want some of the weaker agencies run by politicians during the Bush years like the SEC or the Office of the controller of the Currency or the CFTC involved.
The good govt agencies are ones which have avoided political takeovers from the right or the left and there are not too many of these , admittedly. I think the FED is still pretty reliable even with the right's favorite governor , Greenspan's, destructive behavior of pumping up the bubble almost being the ruination of our economy. The office of thrift supervision was warning a long time ago about the housing bubble , and that was run by a Bush appointee; whom few listened to as the money was too good.
You are getting a wierd view of what really happened if you theink that Barney Frank was central to the financial collapse. The destruction of the Glass Seagall Act (sponsored by Sen Grahamm and others of both parties) and the subsequent speculative behavior of investment banks , brought on in part by the rapid increase in the world money supply after 2000 and in part by a climate in the US of anything goes ; encouraged by the Bush administration- with some DEM support, allowed for the packaging of mortgage debt into financial instruments without much regard to the underlying quality of assets. The profits were huge, the buyers were sleepwalking, sort of like in earlier bubbles like the Tulip craze, and the govt looked the other way. The SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage to 33 to 1 ; not much cushion in a downturn but huge profits in a boom.
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GOP was correct in noting that fannie and Freddie were also doing the same thing, partly as a defensive move when mortgage packaging shifted to Lehman etal, but they did not try hard to stop the Govt enterprises when they could have , in my estimation, in large part because they were beholden to the banks, investment banks, insurance companies , mortgage brokers, etc who were making billions off the bubble. |
