Countervailing power
After the BP catastrophe and financial market collapse: Taking back the sway big business has over our government
By Robert Kuttner
WashPost
June 10, 2010
AS INVESTIGATIONS are now revealing, there were laws that should have prevented the BP oil blowout, but the oil companies kept getting waivers from the Minerals Management Service, which was thoroughly tamed by the petroleum industry and its political allies in Washington.
The government’s supervision of the oil drilling industry was particularly corrupted under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the former chief executive of Halliburton who ran the Bush administration’s energy task force. But restoring vigilant supervision evidently was not a priority for the Obama administration either.
The same hijacking of the regulatory apparatus occurred on the financial front. Ample laws could have prevented the speculative collapse if they had been enforced, including requiring banks to use sound underwriting standards, preventing credit rating agencies from bestowing triple-A ratings on junk, or keeping derivatives in check. The regulatory defaults spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations.
At issue are two interconnected failures of the economy and politics: what economists call market failure, and what political scientists call regulatory capture — and their cause and cure.
(More here.)
By Robert Kuttner
WashPost
June 10, 2010
AS INVESTIGATIONS are now revealing, there were laws that should have prevented the BP oil blowout, but the oil companies kept getting waivers from the Minerals Management Service, which was thoroughly tamed by the petroleum industry and its political allies in Washington.
The government’s supervision of the oil drilling industry was particularly corrupted under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the former chief executive of Halliburton who ran the Bush administration’s energy task force. But restoring vigilant supervision evidently was not a priority for the Obama administration either.
The same hijacking of the regulatory apparatus occurred on the financial front. Ample laws could have prevented the speculative collapse if they had been enforced, including requiring banks to use sound underwriting standards, preventing credit rating agencies from bestowing triple-A ratings on junk, or keeping derivatives in check. The regulatory defaults spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations.
At issue are two interconnected failures of the economy and politics: what economists call market failure, and what political scientists call regulatory capture — and their cause and cure.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Banks ... Oil ... what's next ???
Food.
The Dems better be careful ... the next failure of government could be in food regulation ... there will be another "peanut" or "lettuce" or "beef" problem and everyone will ask "Where was the Government ?" ... Obama nomination to head Food Safety is still awaiting a hearing by the Senate Ag Committee ... Blanche Lincoln has been preoccupied with derivatives and reelection ... Klobachar and Franken better force a vote before something happens.
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