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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said, special bonus Real Honest-to-God Expert Edition
Posted by Jill | 6:01 AM
Today's bonus honoree: Nouriel Roubini (registration may be required and you should definitely do it), for noting how Republican "laissez-faire" economics have now turned this country into a corporatist/socialist state.

Money quote:
The paradox is that this this whole mess was created by a bunch of zealot fanatics who believed in the laissez faire ideology of free markets unbound by propers rules, regulation and supervision. As I wrote after the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie:

This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history [Fannie and Freddie] comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.

[snip]

Like scores of evangelists and hypocrites and moralists who spew and praise family values and pretend to be holier than thou and are then regularly caught cheating or cross dressing or found to be perverts these Bush hypocrites who spewed for years the glory of unfettered wild west laissez faire jungle capitalism (and never believed in any sensible and appropriate regulation and supervision of financial markets) allowed the biggest debt bubble ever to fester without any control, have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and are now forced to perform the biggest government intervention and nationalizations in the recent history of humanity, all for the benefit of the rich and the well connected. So Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA. Fanatic zealots of any religion are always pests that cause havoc and destruction with their inflexible fanaticism; but they usually don’t run the biggest economy in the world. But these laissez faire voodoo-economics zealots in charge of the USA have now caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the nastiest economic crisis in decades. So let them be shamed in public for their hypocrisy and zealotry that has caused so much financial and economic damage.


Amen to that.

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2 Comments:
Blogger Porlock Junior said...
Wheeee! Next week: Roubini tells us how he really feels about this.

Speaking of Roubini: He has been saying the last few days that the last of the big independent investment banks are not long for this world. And today, Morgan Stanley is talking about being bought by Wachovia, which is weird since that thing is no pillar of stability.

Meanwhile everyone is agreed that repeal of Glass-Steagall was a stupid act of greed and anti-regulatory doctrine. And it's true.

Problem is, the Merrill bailout and now the probable submergence of Morgan are flagrant violations of Glass-Steagall.The NYT points out this morning that Morgan Stanley exists because of a spinoff from the Morgan banking interests. It doesn't say that was in response to G-S, but it seems probable.

So, when we restore regulation and sanity, what happens to these deals? Do they promptly get unwound? Or grandfathered? Have the Republicans brought us so low that we cannot go back to the systems that worked for 60 years after the New Deal?

I'd like to hear his opinion on that.
9/18/08, 11:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
The funny thing is that while the gov't (us) bails everyone out, regular people who file for bankruptcy get no help and in fact have to now undergo debt counseling. hahahahah...

We elected people who screwed us and helped the rich. Priceless.

By the way, even tho' I support Obama, Biden is a prick for supporting the new bankruptcy bill.
9/18/08, 11:56 AM  
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