The End of the Financial World as We Know It (NYT)

[katty]

more: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/117562/the_end_of_the_financial_world_as_we_know_it/

The End of the Financial World as We Know It

By Michael Lewis and David Einhorn, The New York Times. Posted January 6, 2009.

American capitalism is in a state of pure madness -- here's how we can bring the financial system to a saner place.


We enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We've been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet's college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.

This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence. Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don't know what they are doing with money, who does?

Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

[yardwork]

1. This is the end result of the Reagan Revolution. RIP.

I hope that it spells the beginning of the end of deregulation and supply side economics. All proven failures. It should spell the end of the Republican Party, which hitched its wagon to this mistake.

[Idealism]

2. Reagan was just a tool in that game

A pawn of Milton Friedman. The Chicago School of Economics has been thoroughly discredited, and by proxy, Reaganomics.

[yardwork]

3. I know. Reagan was their figurehead, though. I hope people start to get it.

[TWiley]

4. deregulation = decriminalization

There is no other way to say it. It always results in a substantial increase of unprosecutable white collar crime.

[applegrove]

5. The financial market has failed because of lack of regulation in a few

areas. So all areas of the financial markets need to be regulated.