Lies and the liars who tell them

One of the things that seems most maddening to me has to do with the financial breakdown we've had in the last 2 or 3 years, that it was allowed to happen and that we've done nothing--nothing--to rein in abuse in the system, regulation-wise, and that no one has been prosecuted for outright, blatant abuse of the system and our laws.

It's nearly insane.

It's certainly irresponsible.

And here's a prime example, today, from Yahoo! News on one of their news blogs, "The Lookout".  It seems Alan Greenspan didn't do enough to wreck our economy by allowing the "bubble" he created, years ago as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, now he wants to make sure we don't have any financial oversight of the industry:

Wall Street reform: 

In a recent op-ed in the Financial Times, Alan Greenspan went after Dodd-Frank, the legislation passed by Congress last year to rein in the financial sector. The former Fed chair argued the global financial system is so complicated that almost any regulation is doomed to fail, and that, "with rare exceptions" like the 2008 financial crisis, unregulated markets have a pretty good track record anyway.

Now this case is a little different, because Greenspan was expressing an opinion. And everyone's entitled to an opinion. But the barrage of withering criticism directed at the man who used to be known as "the maestro" made clear this was an opinion largely unsupported by facts. Numerous commentators poked gaping holes in the former Fed chair's argument: For one thing, the 2008 crisis, which nearly toppled the world financial system, shouldn't be glossed over in a parenthesis; for another, it's far from the only exception to global economic stability since the industry was deregulated beginning in the late 1970s; and finally, there's reason to believe that smart regulations can indeed help make sure the financial system functions smoothly.

So we're going to rank Greenspan's claims one level higher on our gauge-- not as completely bogus as the idea that BP spilled less oil in 2010 than previous years, or that no one knew Obama growing up. But not much more accurate.

If one more right-wing or Republican or "Conservative" or even Libertarian person says we don't need any additional financial regulation after the debacle of the last 3 years, I'll at least scream, at minimum.

There's some more real beauties on here, too, if you want to look, like BP saying they didn't spill that much oil this last year:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110405/ts_yblog_thelookout/closer-look-are-bp-donald-trump-and-alan-greenspan-telling-the-truth
Background on Mr. Greenspan:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_greenspan

An education and warning

I hope you--and lots of people, nationwide--watched the "Frontline" special on PBS last evening named "The Warning."

It was about how our unregulated markets were allowed to be created, first, but then, further, how they were allowed to propagate, complete with rules that allowed out-and-out fraud and manipulation of the markets, with the thought that completely, utterly free markets were important and good and that they could and would regulate themselves.

They did and, because of the lack of regulation, they also collapsed.

Last evening's one-hour report told of one woman's attempt to regulate the quantity of trades--so we know how much or our economy was tied up in it--as well as regulating, again, possible manipulation and fraud.

So now, here we are in 2009 after two collapses in our markets and where are we?

After seeing it, I had to ask: How could you not come to the conclusion that we are in very much the same place, without having learned any lessons?

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and all these people are still in power, the bonuses are still being paid out, there were no penalties, we still allow fraud and manipulation in commodity futures, we still don't regulate the trillions of dollars in hedge funds, etc.

It's hard to be optimistic about either what happened in the 1990's and its collapse, the recent collapse, now, in the 2000's and into the future.

If you didn't see "The Warning", you need to.

Links: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052502108.html
http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/10/20/brooksley-born-on-frontline-tuesday/