It made me sad that he no longer has the clout to make his assessments count for much. I agree that he was Presidential material of the type we haven’t seen in a while.

I called the dem national party and a few others today and said what we are talking about here now, it is like whistling in the wind! We need a movement to make ourselves heard but not a screaming match where no one listens or hears.

I wonder if bailouts of the magnitude we’ve just witnessed will be countenanced by the public in the future? We need to somehow make sure that our legislators get the message that they can’t keep indemnifying the irresponsible failures of Wall Street.

The current POTUS isn’t the man to do the job. Neither it seems is this Congress. Would Republicans be up to the task?

I’ve said before on NQ that I believe until political campaigns are publicly funded and no other campaign contributions are allowed — I mean none, zero, zip — I see no hope whatsoever that Wall Street fat cats will ever have to sufficiently suffer consequences. I’m not naive enough to think that outright bribery and sweetheart deals would stop, but it could be a big first step towards draining the DC swamp. I’d gladly add $20 to my tax return if it would help put a stop to the madness.

Both of them should just shut up and go away.
Isn’t the shame they’ve brought onto their families enough.
Spitzer.
Sanford.
STFU.

Obama thanks Wall Street for Destroying the Economy so that he could get Elected

“I’m thinking that the FED would not be around in a real “free market” environment; because we wouldn’t need it.”

I read a “wake up and smell the coffee” article at AlterNet. Here’s a intro to one of the essays:

“The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed’s thrall, the economists missed it, too.

“The Fed has a lock on the economics world, says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. “There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong.”"

We have dived down the rabbit hole. Is it any wonder why the public wonders who and what it can trust and/or believe?

Btw, this was also published at the Huffington Post.

Amazing!

PS: Audit the Fed, now!!!

However! I don’t know if I completely agree with Spitzer on the “fragility” issue. I contend that markets can be “self-regulating” if only no one ever stepped in to save the market when the market screws up. It’s the old parental notion of “learning from natural consequences.”

We need laws, yes, fair laws; but what will inevitably happen is that new regulations spawn new scams to skirt them, new “innovations” that circumvent them; what then?

The “market” as a natural environment, functions best when neither regulations nor bailouts alter the natural ebb and flow. When they get “too big to fail,” it’s a sure sign that we have somehow altered the “natural” environment by either too little or too much regulatory additives. Suppose the government hadn’t bailed out anyone. It would have been painful; but wouldn’t we have cleared out the crooks, the criminals, the corrupt, the oligarchy, and had a new, fresh beginning?

I don’t know the answer, but it seems to me that if we were stern enough to stick to capitalism–real market economics–instead of cycles of “no regulation” and cycles of “much regulation”–we’d all be better off in the long run. I’m thinking that the FED would not be around in a real “free market” environment; because we wouldn’t need it.

Spitzer signed his death warrant with this article. That article appeared one day after Spitzer’s rendezvous with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Furthermore, on March 4, 2008, he proposed legislation that would impose penalties for mortgage fraud and predatory lending.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

– Winston Churchill

Blame Bush if you like for the borrow and spend policies that created our national debt–until Obama got in and now it is Katie bar the doors. But blame Greenspan for the collapse of your portfolio. He was negligent. You simply cannot allow unregulated hedge funds, private equity funds and shifting sands mutuals to control our economy. This includes people like George Soros.

Hillary was determined to regulate hedge funds, etc. and that was no small part of the reason why these people backed Obama. His commitment to free trade was coded language for I will let you do your thing.

I’ve read a number of Spitzer’s essays and/or watched vids, where he’s explained the mess we’re in, how we’ve been miserably served by the very institutions that were suppose to be watchdogs and have come away impressed each and every time.

Keep beating the drum, Larry. And I hope Spitzer keeps speaking out as well.