Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Another Plea for Sanity

Joseph Stiglitz once more makes the case that the banks are running the madhouse. The administration continues on the path of bailing out the people who caused most of the mess. As Stiglitz writes, "the administration has confused bailing out the bankers and their shareholders with bailing out the banks." He equates the "too big to fail" mantra with the sensible insight "too big to be managed". With all this money we have advanced, has lending increased? It sure doesn't look that way. We have (had?) an opportunity to change the system to minimize a recurrence of this mess or a worse one.

Then, one reads about the administration's backpedaling with regard to improved regulation of the financial industry. And what does one get? Worries about turf wars between agencies.

But what are we doing? Rewarding the people who brought us to this. Shame on our leaders. Shame on us.

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