Comments on: Casting Blame, Part I

By: Lost & Found

Lost & Found — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:39:31 +0000

Great article. Deregulation and lack of the right regulation were the culprits that allowed Wall Street to go berserk.

By: LibertyVini

LibertyVini — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:04:25 +0000

Barry is like a lot of smart people on the left – they can identify the bankers as villains, and even the Fed chairman in some cases, but it never gets through their heads that what just happened was NOT the result of “deregulation” (more like mal-regulation) of any kind of “free market”.

By: Will Mullins

Will Mullins — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:00:48 +0000

What happend to the gold standard, until the Government stops printing money they don’t have value to back up, we are headed for disaster, If my business does not have money to operate, I stop until I get it, I cannot print my money to keep operating and neither can the Government, AND, all the money they are spending is truly the tax payers money and we get back to the old saying, taxation without representation, check out your history and see what happend because of this, I think the same drastic measure should apply today, if the people don’t speak up and take back our GOVERNMENT, there will be no Government to take back, we are working our lives away and our money is being spent on someone else, I believe in the old adage- no work- no eat, every person must carry their own load, no one owes you a free ride. in every family on welfare, there is at least one person able to work and take care of the family, we have three and four generations on welfare, stop this and you stop the cause of much of our money problems, protect the working people who protect and keep America going, if every worker in America stopped working for one week, where would the Government get all its money to blow on worthless projects and businesses, its up to every working American to speak up and protect our freedoms and money, no where in our constitution does it say the Government has the right to take our money without our approval and bail out banks that caused the problem in the first place, Obama and his demmies are destroying America and its tax payers, when social security was first implimentd, it had to be used for social security only, guess who voted to change this, the Demmies, it has taken me 64 years to figure out what the demmies were doing with my hard earned tax money, I changed parties, I cannot afford to be a demmie any longer

By: Barry Davis

Barry Davis — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:35:39 +0000

The Bilderbergers have stated what they wish to do with the World’s economy such as destroy the US dollar. Alan Greenspan is is part of the group as many other well known prople. Do they wish to help the country and public….not likely…..ask yourself, where would their alegiance be? Barack Obama sometimes hangs out with the Bilders, where does his alegiance hang? These people must be brought out as to who they support….so far, it is not the public!
The Bilders, all 130 of them, want us dead!

Barry.

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:08:33 +0000

Greenspan’s protestations that he was mistaken in presuming that the bank’s (et.al.) self-interest would cause them to protect their, and their shareholders, interests has always seemed a bit lame to me. In fact, very lame, to the point of just being untrue.

Was he unaware of the stupid manipulation of the entire housing market by the GSE’and their Wall Street analogs. How could he have been?

The CFMAof 2000, and it creators and he who signed it into law, are certainly at the core of this also. Without the Act I believe there would have been no Credit Default Swaps, no ability for the destructive manipulation that occurred, and probably a far lesser current disaster.

Greenspan’s conduct at the Fed seems just to have provided the necessary monetary subsidy for the entire enterprise to happen. And, the entire enterprise was public policy, brought to us by the elected branches of government.

Why did the Fed not exercise appropriate monetary control, or perhaps appropriate regulatory control, to protect the nation and its citizens from the predations of the political class?? The world wonders.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:26:26 +0000

The market is correcting Mr. Greenspan’s mistakes. It doesn’t need any help. If Long Term Capital had been allowed to go bankrupt we would not have these problems with swaps today.

By: Don

Don — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:11:04 +0000

Quite an interesting read however my view is that this was always going to happen with a fiat currency. Greenspan just accelerated the process that was going to happen no matter what.

By: James R

James R — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:02:46 +0000

I find it difficult to believe that the author of “Bailout Nation” could have written such a naive piece.

There hasn’t been anything even vaguely resembling a free market in the United States for a long time. Even before the meltdown, government intervention in the economy was both systemic and pervasive: minimum wages laws, discrimination laws, tends of thousands of pages of regulations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a fiat currency, legal tender laws, et. al.

(Now, in the wake of the meltdown, the financial and housing markets have been nationalized in all but name, along with a significant portion of the auto industry!)

Did the Republicans’ fiddling with the Jenga-esque monstrosity of financial regulations contribute to the meltdown? Absolutely. But the bubble and subsequent meltdown would have occurred anyway, because all that new money that the Fed was creating had to go somewhere. And since there’s a huge revolving door between Wall Street and government, all the big firms that took insane risks knew that when it all burned down, their buddies in government would bail them out.

The foundation of the U.S. economy rests not on the free market, but on central planning and fiat money. And as history has shown again and again and again, central planning and fiat money are the true, ultimate WMDs: all fiat currencies are destroyed by their own governments, and all attempts at central planning end in complete disaster.

So let’s place the ultimate blame squarely on who most deserves it: the government. It was the root of all the evils that arose.

There is no chance of any lasting economic recovery until currency is returned to the people and the economy is returned to the markets.

(Check out campaignforliberty.com and mises.org for more info.)

By: daddysteve

daddysteve — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:09:58 +0000

The “market” certainly has a way of regulating itself. It’s called bankruptcy. If these bloodsuckers and hucksters were allowed to go under as they deserve this country could possibly already be on the way to recovery. Of course this cleansing could and should have happened in the past.

By: Fred Gibson

Fred Gibson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:40:33 +0000

This is the first time I have read anything by this author, and it will be my last. In my opinion, it is pure political propaganda. It wasn’t the Democrats who said, “Deficits don’t matter.” The Republicans led and pushed the country and world into financial disaster with a long string of failures and incompetent leadership! Is there any traditional principle of the Republican Party Bush and Company didn’t violate?!!!!
Get your head out of the sand and let’s rebuild the Republican Party along the lines of common sense again!