Terrific post yesterday about the banks and our Congress at The Erstwhile Conservative. Duane over there does – as I told him – the ‘heavy lifting’ while I occupy myself with Maru and oldies.
He points us to a warning from Sen. Byron Dorgan [ALERT: NY Times link] in 1999 about the dangers of repealing the Glass-Steagal Act, but they did it. They:
[Duane] . . . passed the Financial Services Modernization Act, which finally allowed commercial and investment banks and securities and insurance companies to stop slyly shacking up with each other and unite in unholy but legal matrimony.
[Dorgan in 1999] I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930′s is true in 2010…We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.
Duane quotes two more Democratic Senators:
[Sen. Bernie Sanders today] Let me just say again what many people will not be happy to hear. Wall Street is extraordinarily powerful. Congress doesn’t regulate them, the big banks regulate what Congress does.
[Sen. Dick Durbin three years ago]…hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place
Let me, Moe, add another quote, a more recent one, from Bush 43’s speechwriter, David Frum:
Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. [Note from Moe: Krugman warned constantly about repealing Glass-Steagel; the WSJ supported it.]
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Hey, didn’t I see this elsewhere?! Tip of the hat to Krugman et al for predicting this one…… how many Liberal fortunes did it save though? 😉
Kidding aside, I think half the problem was that people on both sides didn’t want to listen. When has the general public ever really listened to warnings?
And go back to past stock market crashes. We all know where Buffet sat, but where are all those other “oracles” now? Can we even name any of them without a Google search?
I think most peoples’ focus is like “Economy?” “Crash?” “Hey look! SQUIRREL!!!!!” no matter what’s being said.
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Surely we humans have a glorious history of fogetting our glorious history.
And of course, when it suits, we remember what suits. (what the ?)
These days Vern, with each ‘side’ having its own official media and narratives and scripts laid out each morning outlining what we are to fight about today, it’s all becoming just a big noise machine.
And no one is thinking. Because, as you so perfectly put it, “Hey look! SQUIREEL!!”
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“scripts laid out each morning”
Very well said, Moe, as always. 🙂
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Also . . . yup, you did ineed ‘see it elsewhere’. 😆
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