 CIA Office (Image by Hannah Arendt Center) Details DMCA | The language with which we talk about regulation has been handed to us by the Right Wing. "Deregulation" means less bureaucratic meddling, and it must be good. But the debate is based on false premises. There's no such thing as an unregulated bank. Banks are institutions to which the government has granted the right to issue IOU's that it will recognize as legal tender. The government regulates everything from a bank's reserve requirements to its hours of operation. So do people mean by "deregulation"? It means "changing the regulatory structure in a way that is profitable to me." In the case of banking, deregulation has meant moving away from managed competition between mid-sized banks to domination by mega-banks. In the case of airlines and telecomm firms in the 70s and 80s, deregulation meant the opposite: allowing mid-size firms to compete. In neither case did bureaucracy decrease. |
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At harpers.org
At harpers.org
