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To: pstuartb who wrote (290382)	11/9/2010 10:41:46 PM
From: koan	Respond to of 306849

That is so true and it broke my heart! The kids are inheriting a mess. <<Even GWB and Paulson need to be commended for doing the right thing.. Gimme a break. The options weren't: 1) do nothing, and 2) do what GWB and Paulson did. They had the option of doing something reasonable, instead of rewarding the worst actors with trillions of dollars and encouraging them to do more of the same. Here's one description of a more reasonable option, by James Galbraith, that was rejected, and it could have been taken in 2008 or implemented after O took office: "Law, policy and politics all pointed in one direction: turn the systemically dangerous banks over to Sheila Bair and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Insure the depositors, replace the management, fire the lobbyists, audit the books, prosecute the frauds, and restructure and downsize the institutions. The financial system would have been cleaned up. And the big bankers would have been beaten as a political force. Team Obama did none of these things. Instead they announced "stress tests," plainly designed so as to obscure the banks' true condition. They pressured the Federal Accounting Standards Board to permit the banks to ignore the market value of their toxic assets. Management stayed in place. They prosecuted no one. The Fed cut the cost of funds to zero. The President justified all this by repeating, many times, that the goal of policy was "to get credit flowing again." The banks threw a party. Reported profits soared, as did bonuses. With free funds, the banks could make money with no risk, by lending back to the Treasury. They could boom the stock market. They could make a mint on proprietary trading." commondreams.org

To: pstuartb who wrote (290382)	11/9/2010 11:56:40 PM
From: marcher	Respond to of 306849

interesting convergence of liberal and libertarian economic perspective.

To: pstuartb who wrote (290382)	3/18/2011 12:59:57 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.. I think you have the idea that Sheila Bair, a government employee, and the FDIC could have quickly comprehended ALL the bizarre derivatives and schemes that the ALL the huge IB banks were involved in and unwound them in a manly manner, for the common good! Taken over the functions of thousands of highly trained, knowledgeable, bank employees. I think you FORGET that global commerce was at a FULL STOP. NO short term loans, that grease the wheels of global commerce, were being made. NO insurance was being issued on shipping or trucking, so, it wasn't happening! Gas doesn't just magically APPEAR at the station. Food doesn't just MATERIALIZE on the grocery shelves. Tankers and freight hauling ships were being PARKED in a giant mass off Hong Kong. Trucks weren't rolling, all over the globe. John is RIGHT. Could it have been done better, in hindsight - SURE! Hindsight is 20-20. I'd LOVE to see some banksters go DOWN though, and that's all on O's Justice Dept.