Aripyanfar wrote:
Well given how a few hundred private businesses (banks) managed to mismanage themselves, then proceed to take down most of the rest of the worlds' economies with them when they went down the gurgler, damn straight they are not being left alone to their own devices any more. And if the Replicans were in power at the moment, they'd be doing exactly the same thing*, because leaving the world hostage to them** is obviously idiotic and untenable to anyone with the slightest intelligence.
The banks were doing exactly what we (and the government) asked them to do. It's easy to criticize them and insist that they shouldn't take risks to increase profits right after said risks caused some economic fallout. But the rest of the time, we demand higher interest rate savings accounts, and lower interest loans, and a host of other financial activities, all of which benefit us. You kinda have to take one with the other. Saddle banks with too much regulation and you slow down economic growth during good economic times. We may not suffer as big a drop when things go bad, but we end up in a constant state of economic sluggishness as a consequence. Do this in an environment where there are any choices about where people put their money and the cure will likely be worse than the disease.
I'll also point out that the loophole-like conditions which encouraged financial institutions to put their money into increasingly risky investments was largely created by government regulation. I suppose if we lived in a world where regulators were "perfect" this wouldn't be a problem. But the law of unintended consequences seems to get us quite often...
Edited, Jan 28th 2010 7:28pm by gbaji
You're such a joke