Belly-up bankers reveal the bankruptcy of "conservatism"

About ten years ago I called conservative Armstrong Williams on the radio and told him his complete laissez-faire policies were tried before and they ended in the Great Depression. After hearing my comment he said, "You liberals love the Great Depression," probably meaning we love to bring it up. But the truth is opposite to his words, we hate the Great Depression and never wanted it to happen again.

Technically beginning with President Carter, but really building up steam with the "Reagan Revolution," deregulation has been the tide for about 30 years now. Reagan-Bush-Bush have been at the forefront of pushing deregulation, but even President Clinton was compelled to say, "The era of big government is over."

McCain is as much in this loop than anyone. McCain was one of the two least culpable members of the infamous Keating Five, but received Senate rebuke nonetheless for his influence leading to the savings and loan crisis and bailout of the late 80s and early 90s. More recently, McCain was in league with Bush to move social security funds into the stock market, which could impoverish retirees in an instant with massive stock sell-offs and corporate bankruptcies like we've witnessed this week. These two incidents alone prove McCain's track record of esteeming lobbyists more than voters and putting the interests of Wall Street over Main Street. Never forget McCain's words from as recently as April this year were he dogmatically asserted, "I don’t think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and higher taxes has any real understanding of economics and the economy and what is needed in order to ensure the future of this country."

As long as the anti-regulation Republicans remain in office only two options remain to diversify your portfolio. Take some of your money, and hide it under your mattress; then bury the rest in your backyard. This is what we've come to after 30 years of fiscal Republican-lawlessness. Don't lose heart, though, because at high-noon on January 20, 2009, President Obama could become the new financial "Sheriff" in town. If elected, 123 days from now he and his posse of service-oriented governmental regulators can re-create reasonable regulations that will allow honest, hardworking U.S. citizens earn wealth as they did in the decades from Roosevelt to Reagan.

The era of deregulation is over. The United States is a free market, but there need to be boundaries. Infantile Republicans are finally learning that regulations are things toddlers learn, "Don't put your hand in the fire or you'll get burned." With a-historical college dropouts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity preaching that the "invisible hand" of the free market will solve everything, they have ignored what they should have learned from the last Great Depression. Their parallels to Herbert Hoover's "rugged individualism" are mind-boggling. In reality, however, they are more culpable than Hoover because we're supposed to learn from history.

http://boilingmad.blogspot.com/2008/09/belly-up-economy-reveals-bankruptcy-of.html