USPolitics.einnews.comBut once the music stopped and investors decided to stop investing, the bubble created by all the speculation was no longer sustainable. Prices fell. Stocks and properties bought with debt became virtually worthless. Worried creditors stopped lending. Banks couldn't cover their losses, and closed. Depositors who failed to move quickly enough found shuttered doors where they once thought their life savings were secure.
In response, the Roosevelt administration spearheaded controls to head off future speculative disasters. Regulations were put in place to make bankers act more like bankers than like high rollers at gaming tables. The regulations took dead aim at conflicts of interests and forcing full disclosure, so that investors would know what they were buying into. Housing markets were stabilized by government mortgage guarantees.
Somewhere between the Goldwater years and the Reagan presidency, big business had a massive memory dump and forgot the lessons of the Great Depression. Instead of seeing the Roosevelt era regulations for what they were----necessary rules to keep the capital market game dependable and honest---the captains of banking and investment decided that those rules were unfair and onerous. Starting in the 1970s, deregulation became the mantra, and minions in Congress slowly began to unwind the fabric that had produced the sustained growth of the post-World War 2 years.
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