Buy the mere fact she will take up that space she sits in, while keeping someone else from being able to step up and be a real leader. (only faw in that is as of this moment I can't give you the name of who that other person should be)

I would say the same exact thing about Bush (but he guaranteed to get removed in 3.5 months.)

I suppose a bail out is in order. However the CEO's and board members of these companies really ought to have their feet held to the fire at some point. They conveniently privatize the profits during a boom economy, and then publicize the losses when the stuff hits the fan.
I think the Chinese shot somebody after the lead paint debacle.
Our financial geniuses go to the best schools, enjoy lifestyles second to none. Then pull the cord on a golden parachute when it all goes wrong. All the while telling us the working poor, that we need to just buck up, and learn to do more with less. Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps etc..

If you mean flawed bilaterally from Dems and Reblicans then I agree with that statement. Only a bipartisan screw up across the board could have created a mess of this magnitude. If not then it represents a failure of the constitution.

We could probably count some clinton years as well. Some de-regulation went on while he was in office. Not to mention NAFTA

I this case I do blame people in power for not forseeing this result or at least insuring better oversight. Republicans have help the top positions, and I have heard over and over again in recent years of them deregulating business and requiring less oversight. So even having read some of Alice’s links I still blame them far more for our current situation and feel the situation is highly political and is ripe for sound bites. They are at least more valid than lipstick and other rubbish,.

I don’t blame our leaders for not being able to pass a particular piece of legislation to solve a particular problem. I only require them to actively promote effective solutions. I can only hope that if enough of them were to do this then good solutions would be the result.



I keep hearing the phrase “to big to fail”. Hearing that makes me think the very first thing we should legislate is the size of business so that none are too big to fail. That leaves me with the problem of the size of government, which in my perfect would certainly be to big to fail!

a little history...

After the 1929 stock market crash which led into the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act (1933) was passed in order to avoid another financial crash. In part, by reducing commercial speculation by the banks, it hoped to limit the amount of risk that a bank could accept.

Fast forward to 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley basically overturned Glass-Steagall.

Now you may note this was during Clinton's term, but the original passage in the Senate was strictly on a Republican Party line vote (54-44).
reference: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s1999-105

However, once the bill went into committee to resolve the House and Senate differences it was approved overwhelmingly (90-8).

As for what this means to our current candidates:
McCain voted for the original bill, and against the committe report.
Biden voted against the original bill, and for the compromise version.
One of the sponsors of the bill was Phil Gramm, now McCain's top economic advisor.

Make of it what you will.

I listened to Hank Greenberg get interviewed this evening. Two very important take aways from what he said. (well at least I thought anyway)

1. Regulation can not replace good management. - he went on to explain that most of the trouble (real trouble) was due to poor mis-management of some of these companies (over leverage)

2. There are very sound investment companies that are on solid ground but that the fear being pushed right now in the markets is taking out the good with the bad. (They would be the 'not in real trouble') Goldman Sachs was one example.

Absolutely, but it provides a known minimum - kind of like a diploma.

You can still be a lousy Doctor with a diploma from the best med school

Regulation are needed to keep the idiots from screwing up everyone else's stuff. (in a prefect world anyway)

I think that's the point. Extreme free market types argue that no regulation is needed for things like fraud because the market will punish those who commit fraud; they'll eventually be found out and no one will do business with them.

I think that's true, but they'll be found out only after they've perhaps run off with the money and left their investors with no recourse to recover their losses. Regulation, such as mandatory disclosures, imposes some costs but helps prevent those without fault from suffering losses in the first place, thereby "keep[ing] the idiots from screwing up everyone else's stuff," as Smike aptly put it.

But regulation is always behind the times as the bright boys (and girls) keep finding new ways of screwing up everyone else's stuff. Greed always seems to get ahead of the rules, and the market in the end imposes some very painful discipline. There seems to be no way to impose prudent management--or to require investors to ask prudent questions before taking managements' recommendations.

Unfortunately, so many people's stuff has been screwed up this time that it looks like we're all going to have to help pick up the tab. It is astounding that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may not survive as independent entities; when you're that leveraged, you're extremely exposed when people lose confidence and valuations drop.