Paul Krugman: Wall Street Whitewash

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

When the financial crisis struck, many people — myself included — considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.

How naïve we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.

(snip)
It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

(snip)
In the end, those of us who expected the crisis to provide a teachable moment were right, but not in the way we expected. Never mind relearning the case for bank regulation; what we learned, instead, is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. And the answer is, the facts lose.

[sasha031]

1. well of course it's the poor's fault

the never ever ending battle of divide and conquer and beating up on the poor...

[Kaleko]

2. Krugman is good but he doesn't go far enough.

The financial crisis was part of a well-planned controlled demolition. Same as all of the events surrounding 9/11.

[ThomCat]

3. So poor people forced all those rich people to be corupt,

and forced them to become richer. Poor people had so much power, but were so amazingly short sighting (as those powerful poor people invariably are) that they forced all those defenseless rich bankers to enter into systematic fraudulent agreements with them. That way the fraud infected the entire banking industry, not just individual loans and accounts. Oh, what a mess those dangerous poor people created!

Worse, those dangerous poor people forced the defenseless bankers to change all of the basic banking systems to accommodate their every whim and demand. The bankers were forced to obey! The effect was that even commercial lending and international lending was affected, not just lending with those poor people here within the US. That just goes to show you how amazingly powerful those dastardly poor people were.

Oh, those defenseless bankers! Oh Woe! The victimized bankers need another bailout to help them recover!

:sarcasm:

:P