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

One small satisfaction

The one thing--the only thing--I can take any small comfort from out of all this financial mess we're now dealing with--and will continue to be dealing with, for weeks or months or years to come--is that, out of all the socialism and fascism that is and will continue to come out of it, was all brought to us by the Republican Party.

Oh, yeah, the Republicans.

It was Senators John McCain and his pal Phil ("The United States is a nation of whiners") Graham that wanted to--and did--deregulate the banking industry that we're paying for now and will continue to pay for.

President Adolf Bush and his sidekick, Vice President Goerring Cheney want their tightly controlled, ultra-secret government with its listened to and watched public. That's where the Fascism has come.

And the socialism, what with buying the mortgage markets first, and then the insurance conglomerate, AIG and now, did you hear this? The Congress wants to cover banks on our loans over in Europe and, I guess, around the world.

Not stopping there, Rep. Barney Frank (yeah, OUR guy) said aloud this weekend that maybe we should throw more good federal tax dollars at the credit card industry, too.

Holy cow. Where is this going to stop?

And when?

And how soon?

I like my idea of just buying up the healthcare industry and nationalizing the energy industries.

My plan would have been cheaper.

And had a lot more benefits.


Good luck to us, people.

We need it.