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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (105199)	3/1/2009 2:52:26 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 540836

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.

To: slacker711 who wrote (105199)	3/1/2009 3:17:27 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 540836

< Let's put all of them in jail> You may not be able to prove their guilt to point where they go to jail, but that is not why you do it in criminal court. As I said to Michael in this post, Message 25453086 The reason to take it to criminal court is to recover the ill gotten gains distributed by the guilty corporation to other entities, individual and corporate, and not waste the assets of the shareholder to do it. Even if ONLY the company is found guilty, then the regulators can put them under scrutiny and all distributions while guilty are enjoined. I've been in a company under Special Conditions of Probation. It fundamentally changes the way a company does business. The old culture is out, and any new or old way of doing things needs to be explained and rational. It also has to be explained to a continuous round of independent auditors. It is a very good process. And no, the next generation better not try the same crap while the company is under probation because they WILL get jail time while their actions are under the scrutiny of the court.