David B. Shemano wrote: > So extreme greed was the driving force, which will be remedied by a change of > the rules. But that would appear to implicitly recognize that the existing > rules were a fundamental part of the problem, so that would necessitate an > investigation of why the Congress chose the rules that it did, which would > necessitate an investigation of the role of Congress in contributing to the > financial crisis. But the role of Congress is not on the investigation > agenda. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [who will watch the watchers, guard > the guardians?]<
But it was the existing _lack_ of rules that were the problem, the result of the feed-the-money-men ideology that took over starting in the 1980s (compared to the more regulated financial sector with many fewer and much smaller crises before that). While Congress has been clearly been cahoots with the financial nabobs, that really hasn't changed since the 1950s. What's changed is the disappearance or severe shrinkage of what John Kenneth Galbraith called "countervailing power," i.e., the organized labor movement and various leftoid movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thus, David's "Who'll guard the guardians?" question is apt. What's the answer? It's mass democratic movements at the grassroots to take political power away from the rich and their pet Congresscritters. (It's clearly not the Teabaggers, with their "I want mine so I can join the rich, too/we hate anyone who says different" version of greed.) Of course, what in hell is "greed," anyway? Doesn't capitalism run on greed? It's quite an ambiguous term. Liberals of various stripes seem to be saying that we need to replace bad greed (which drives Goldman Sachs _et al_) with good greed (of the quiet sort presumed to rule in the 1950s and 1960s). How's that going to happen? Maybe Pres. Obama could lead mass consciousness-raising sessions to encourage the greediest to embrace their inner Buddhas. That's absurd at best. My view is that the Goldman Sachses of the world will act more responsibly when their forced to do so by the new countervailing power mentioned above. Of course, they'll keep on looking for new loopholes -- and mining old ones -- so that their inner Ayn Rand can fully re-emerge, like a vulture from the flames. Ultimately, therefore, we have to get rid of the system run by greed (i.e., capitalism), even the social-democratic sort in which (most) greed is channeled in a more positive direction. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
