Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (33010)	2/19/2009 6:59:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

No Steve it does work that way. Someone else may be blamed, but if they are not actually the cause of the problem even indirectly, then any blame is false blame, and if they are only partially responsible, then than only some of the blame should be on them. If someone really isn't to blame, than taking responsibility for the problem might seem commendable but it really isn't. It helps draw us away from the real problem. If they are partially to blame, then they should accept the responsibility, and to the extent they mention anyone else, it should only be as part of trying to understand and explain the situation, not to deflect blame when they where part of the problem. The should face up to the problem and accept blame for their role in it. OTOH, if they try to say "it was all me", when it wasn't, they draw us away from important parts of the problem, that's a bad thing not a good one. You talk of blaming the person in charge, but for the economy there isn't a person in charge. There is no one with whom the buck actually stops, not even the government as a whole in the broadest sense of the word, counting the president, congress, the fed, the supreme court, state and local, governments... Also even if the president was properly and/or actually the manager of the economy, the policies leading to the problem happened under multiple presidents. They didn't control the people under them; the bankers, mortgage lenders Bankers and mortgage lenders are not subordinates of the president of the United States. Neither are the people in congress who pass the laws, house buyers who buy houses for more than they can afford, or people all over the world who create the complex economic and financial conditions for a bubble. There was in essence ......no law. There was in fact and in essence, enough law and regulation to crush you to death if it was printed out and placed on top of you. And there were massive and very expensive enforcement efforts related to those laws and regulations. Which doesn't mean enforcement was perfect, or even imply that it was necessarily as good as it had been (or that it wasn't), but "there was in essence....no law" just doesn't make sense. Part of the problem was the law and regulation that did exist, that created perverse incentives helping to lead to the bubble. Part of that was due to changes pushed by the Bush administration, but other parts where from earlier administrations and congresses.