Watch this. Unless you know nothing at all about economics, and you want to know nothing, and you want to ignore everything about economics.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) on fixing the economy...
Ouch.
If you think he's coming off as a bit smug, then consider that he's trying to keep his disgust with the stupid approach to this disaster in check.
If you think he's a bit cynical, then you get the point. We should all be cynical about how the government led us to economic ruin and are now guiding us out.
The crux of our problems aren't, as some believe and would lead you to believe, inherent to the system in which we live. Oooo, capitalism is bad, it is all about greed and selfishness. Yeah, unlike Soviet communism, which was about individuality. C'mon! The breakdown is that some people have the power and others don't. This is still a free society and the media -- real news is getting harder to find, but it is out there -- is still free.
The CRA mortgage lunacy -- the mortgages that were pegged to a policy of housing prices never, ever going down -- were not just part of this, but the lead-in to this mess, plus they were only ONE sign of the lack of insight of government into being the finance and economy's watchdogs. So there's subprime (the mortgages), Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, derivatives, hedge funds, and that's the short list of things they let ride with little control: the White House and Legislature. Mostly, our legislature -- they are the ones influencing regulation directly. The White House can only send bills to the legislature, and wait to approve it once Congress does. It's simple.
These big boys and girls in Washington DC ought to have very few responsibilities, unless you believe we ought to be a socialist country and most people in the country ought to work directly for the government. They ought to run the military, be a watchdog of unethical capitalist behavior and watch the people with the money. Instead, we have people who directly colluded with the companies who brought us here running the show and using more and more money to bolster CEOs and companies that sat on their butts and watched things fail.
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