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Bill Moyers talks with Gretchen Morgenson about the financial crisis and its likely return

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A lot of it has to do with the culture in this country that prompts us to idolize people in positions of power, such as chief executive officers, who now make obscene amounts of money. There are all too few people willing to speak truth to this kind of power. Powerful people are almost always surrounded by yes people. They are kowtowed to like rock stars. Naturally it goes to their head and they almost always think only of themselves.

But could the bailouts have been denied them and their companies without their taking everybody down with them?

Quite possibly not. Nevertheless, it's a mistake to allow them to keep privatizing all of their ill-gotten gains. They take the gains when their stock is rising, when their companies are profitable. But when they get into trouble, they get to socialize the losses, which means that the taxpayer has to pay for the losses, which is of course a pretty sweet deal for the banksters. So, should we be surprised when they send their well funded lobbyists to Washington to make sure this arrangement does not change?

So what would good reform look like?

  • Ensure that companies cannot become too big and too interconnected to fail.
  • Make it very expensive for companies to grow in size and to be in a position to take on very large risks that threaten the entire financial system.
  • Increase capital requirements.
  • Increase the amount that a bank would pay it if it gets over and above a certain size in terms of assets or by some other measure.
  • Somehow increase the cost of doing business for these entities if they grow too big.

Any evidence that the legislation being discussed this week in Washington contains that kind of reform?

There is some language about how we could "unwind' these entities and vague talk about how we could be better prepared, and how we would be vigilant in watching for trouble on the horizon. But no one is saying, "Let's take firm steps to make sure we do not get in this position again. Let's just never again let these banks, these institutions get to the point where they can threaten the entire financial system."

How about what Warren Buffett called financial weapons of mass destruction, i.e. credit default swaps and other complex derivatives. What's been done to disarm those threats?

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Several years after receiving my M.A. in social science (interdisciplinary studies) I was an instructor at S.F. State University for a year, but then went back to designing automated machinery, and then tech writing, in Silicon Valley. I've (more...)
 

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