Why Wall Street is Melting Down, and What to Do About It - Robert Reich

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-wall-street-is-melting-down-and.html

Hank Paulson didn't blink, so Lehman Brothers went down the tubes. The end of socialized capitalism? Don't bet on it. The Treasury and the Fed are scrambling to enlarge the government's authority to exchange securities of unknown value for guaranteed securities in an effort to stave off the biggest financial meltdown since the 1930s.

Ironically, a free-market-loving Republican administration is presiding over the most ambitious intrusion of government into the market in almost anyone's memory. But to what end? Bailouts, subsidies, and government insurance won't help Wall Street because the Street's fundamental problem isn't lack of capital. It's lack of trust.

. . .

What to do? Not to socialize capitalism with bailouts and subsidies that put taxpayers at risk. If what's lacking is trust rather than capital, the most important steps policymakers can take are to rebuild trust. And the best way to rebuild trust is through regulations that require financial players to stand behind their promises and tell the truth, along with strict oversight to make sure they do.

We tell poor nations they have to make their financial markets transparent before capital will flow to them. Now it's our turn. Lacking adequate regulation or oversight, our financial markets have become a snare and a delusion. Government only has two choices now: Either continue to bail them out, or regulate them in order to keep them honest. I vote for the latter.

The Dow is -152
http://www.cnbc.com/id/17689937/site/14081545

but what's to be done right now?

Just like in any game of chance, if you don't trust the other players, the game won't go far.

When I've heard others prescribing regulation for Wall Street, I've alwaus thought "well what's the use, it's too late, the horses have fled the barn." but Reich suggests that the only way to round them up and give everyone confidence that this won't ever happen again is through regulation.

to say it because of the propensity of Repubs to get their lemmings to believe that Dems are to blame for everything in history on the Clinton admin and Congress is the last two years. However, it is true - they allowed the Patriot Act, they allow spying, they allow torture, they allow rendition, they allow the jerks at Homeland Security, they allow trillions in theft. We need help - many of them need to be kicked out.

Sen. Feingold the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act.

How many really did anything about SEC? Besides a hearing? I need to be educated because the record appears to be poor on the rules of the market.

I think KO has Reich on his show already on a somewhat regular basis. This would make a great
segment for Countdown, if it hasn't been done yet that is.

If the president of the United States stands up and lies to us every day and even lies us into a war, why should anyone trust anyone, or anything, in America anymore?

ENRON 101 should have been the red flag, but the BushCo cronies baked the books for Kenny Boy and his ilk and swept the mega-mess all under the rug and the republican based congress covered up it's childish head and thought that they could hide from the big evil assed monster that Reagan/Bush/Gramm type deregulation had created. The monster didn't play that unrealistic fuzzy math shit though and it just got bigger and meaner under George and the goose stepping GOP congress's watch...now the deregulation monster is ready to bite some serious asses. Aurthur Anderson can't even save us now.

"Trust" is a busted...