Are Dems, GOP Serious on Financial Reform?
By Joe Conason
RCP
With a furious majority of American voters demanding security from the depredations of Big Capital, all of the filibustering and bargaining in Congress will inevitably produce a bill described as "financial reform." Partisan sniping aside, neither Democrats nor Republicans so far have proposed a deep and thorough cleansing.
Republicans like to pretend that they had nothing to do with the enormous bank and insurance bailouts of 2008, forgetting that most of them voted to support the "troubled asset" program, and that the authors of the program were officials of the George W. Bush administration.
Rather than merely disowning those actions, the best course is to ensure that we avoid future subsidies to the undeserving rich. That means more regulation and smarter regulation, not less -- and a direct repudiation of arguments advanced by politicians of both parties in the not-so-distant past.
Today's ideological divide is between Republicans who encourage anti-government fervor and market worship, and Democrats who insist that government can and must balance corporate power by acting when markets fail. No honest observer can still believe -- as many once did -- that the unbound self-interest of financiers will correct excesses and direct capital to the benefit of the broader economy automatically. No less a libertarian ideologue than Alan Greenspan, the economic "maestro" who drew his inspiration from the writings of Ayn Rand, admitted almost a decade ago that such blind faith was naive and dangerous.
(More here.)
RCP
With a furious majority of American voters demanding security from the depredations of Big Capital, all of the filibustering and bargaining in Congress will inevitably produce a bill described as "financial reform." Partisan sniping aside, neither Democrats nor Republicans so far have proposed a deep and thorough cleansing.
Republicans like to pretend that they had nothing to do with the enormous bank and insurance bailouts of 2008, forgetting that most of them voted to support the "troubled asset" program, and that the authors of the program were officials of the George W. Bush administration.
Rather than merely disowning those actions, the best course is to ensure that we avoid future subsidies to the undeserving rich. That means more regulation and smarter regulation, not less -- and a direct repudiation of arguments advanced by politicians of both parties in the not-so-distant past.
Today's ideological divide is between Republicans who encourage anti-government fervor and market worship, and Democrats who insist that government can and must balance corporate power by acting when markets fail. No honest observer can still believe -- as many once did -- that the unbound self-interest of financiers will correct excesses and direct capital to the benefit of the broader economy automatically. No less a libertarian ideologue than Alan Greenspan, the economic "maestro" who drew his inspiration from the writings of Ayn Rand, admitted almost a decade ago that such blind faith was naive and dangerous.
(More here.)
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