The reason we need new rules is that a generation of Democrats and Republicans systematically repealed or gutted the old ones--the regulatory controls enacted eighty years ago to remedy the last breakdown of capitalism (better known as the Great Depression).
True, and even then, a lot of those rules made an outright crash almost impossible, but that slow roll and burn, it does not seem able to do much against that. Couldn't really, wasn't designed that way.
Everyone became enamored of the price, but forgot how to calculate the worth, and those are often two very different things. At the same time, and for the same base reasons I would think, far too many people who should have known better got all addicted to the process, and spaced out the reason that the process was there in the first place.
I talk with a lot of MBA types, who are under the illusion/delusion that they are operating some vast wheeling-dealing empire, when in fact, all we do is put on rock shows so we can sell beer and t-shirts. If we could skip the entire very-expensive-and-a-real-pain-in-the-butt show thing, and just get right to selling beer and t-shirts I bet would would, or we should. But, we need the show to get people in there to buy beer and t-shirts, and since its only the show that is bringing those people into buy beer and t-shirts you can't neglect the show itself.
All costs, though equal on a balance sheet, but in real life they are not. In a similar manner, all profits are not equal either, and those profits made by in effect and in reality making our manufacturing base weaker, or fleecing the financial system, were short term gains, and very long term losses, and should not have been allowed.
And that's part of the problem with the gay rights, abortion, gun control debates is that they were put up for pop culture politics while these guys ran loose at the trough, and no one much paid any attention. While these guys looted the Public Treasury everyone was all worried as hell that some gay boys in San Francisco might have a wedding. I mean really, what the hell was the point of that? Were farm boys and rednecks from all the middle parts of this country going to go out and get hitched to their drinking buddies all of a sudden? I doubt it.
You know how much we've spend on this 'bailout' now? Well enough to have simply paid off every single god damned mortgage in the United States. Every fricking penny of every fricking mortgage, paid. Which would have solved a bunch of this, but no... And where has this super huge pile of money gone? Best as I can tell the answer is, "Who knows?" Not exactly a confidence boost, more like a confidence game.
