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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (19792)	4/18/2009 12:17:31 PM
From: axial	Respond to of 71455

Sharing the Blame for the Economic Crisis? truthout.org Bill Moyers: So, you're saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the [w]ringer, right? William K. Black: That's right. And it's particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, "You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they'll run for the exits." Bill Moyers: Yeah, and this week in New York, at this conference, you described this as more than a financial crisis. You called it a moral crisis. William K. Black: Yes. Bill Moyers: Why? William K. Black: Because it is a fundamental lack of integrity. But also because, if you look back at crises, an economist who is also a presidential appointee, as a regulator in the Savings and Loan industry, right here in New York, Larry White, wrote a book about the Savings and Loan crisis. And he said, you know, one of the most interesting questions is why so few people engaged in fraud? Because objectively, you could have gotten away with it. But only about ten percent of the CEOs, engaged in fraud. So, 90 percent of them were restrained by ethics and integrity. So, far more than law or by F.B.I. agents, it's our integrity that often prevents the greatest abuses. And what we had in this crisis, instead of the Savings and Loan, is the most elite institutions in America engaging or facilitating fraud. Bill Moyers: This wound that you say has been inflicted on American life. The loss of worker's income. And security and pensions and future happened, because of the misconduct of a relatively few, very well-heeled people, in very well-decorated corporate suites, right? William K. Black: Right. Bill Moyers: It was relatively a handful of people. William K. Black: And their ideologies, which swept away regulation. So, in the example, regulation means that cheaters don't prosper. So, instead of being bad for capitalism, it's what saves capitalism. "Honest purveyors prosper" is what we want. And you need regulation and law enforcement to be able to do this. The tragedy of this crisis is it didn't need to happen at all. Bill Moyers: When you wake in the middle of the night, thinking about your work, what do you make of that? What do you tell yourself? William K. Black: There's a saying that we took great comfort in. It's actually by the Dutch, who were fighting this impossible war for independence against what was then the most powerful nation in the world, Spain. And their motto was, "It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere." Jim