The analogy of a bank robbery works perfectly. You have the vault cracker (gov) and the actual thief (Wall Street) who runs in and fills the gunny sack full of crisp greenbacks. Katy blames only the vault cracker. I blame both. That’s where we differ.

The reason the investment banks were able to package up poisoned toxic mortgage backed securities (mbs) – get them AAA rated – and sell them to unsuspecting investors as money making investment vehicles while shorting the mbs immediately after the sale was because there was no independent body watching over their activities. The government was in on it too! The ‘free market’ (with no intervention) as you call it – was the reason the Wall Street crooks were allowed to get away with it. And since the crime is not reported to the public until we begin to see the effects (Lehman collapse) the damage has already occurred. So your ‘free market’ failed. Your ‘free market’ was the very reason Wall Street collapsed. Nobody was watching over the ‘free market’. As a result millions of Americans lost their jobs and life savings.

Many people have little tolerance for economic uncertainty and ambiguity, and have come to expect that government institutions will bring a level of certainty to society. But the government only brings more uncertainty to individuals’ lives.

As government grows, remember what Milton Friedman said about greed: “Well first of all tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It’s only the other fella that’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The greatest achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty that you are talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kind of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.”

– Katy

Speaking for myself the terms ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ are meaningless when I look at an issue and form an opinion.

Partisanship is killing the country. Political ideologies have turned into religions. Even in the face of blatant and documented theft and financial fraud – the ideologue conservatives defend the very ones who stole trillions of dollars and financially ruined millions of innocent lives. Only blaming the government for what took place is a total denial of the facts. It’s an insidious mindset. No flexibility. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement actually have a great deal in common. But the conservative ideologues only attack the Occupy movement without one good word. It wasn’t long ago when the Occupy movement marched on the government offices and the Supreme Court in DC? Did you hear anything from the conservative ideologues? Nope. In Dec 2011 52 Occupiers were arrested while demonstrating in front of the Federal Reserve building in San Francisco. Did the conservative ideologues commend them? Nope. As long as the government and the fiscal oligarchs can successfully divide America into two inflexible factions – they will continue to financially rape us and turn us into serfs. 5% of the American population owns 60% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80% of the American population owns only about 12% of the nation’s wealth. That gives you an idea of how successful the government and the fiscal oligarchs have been.

And you don’t think the Wall Street banks are crony capitalists? You think they are victims? Is that it? I don’t quite understand where you’re coming from here. Do you seriously think JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BofA, WF, Merrill Lynch, Moodys, Fitch, S&P were all innocent victims who were taken advantage of by the big bad government?

I’m sorry, but that is such a stupid misinformed statement.

The reason Wall Street collapsed in 2008 was due to LACK OF PROPER GOVERNMENT REGULATION.

You people who think the free market can regulate itself sound like mindless parrots.

By the time the consumers feel the effect of massive fraud perpetrated upon them by the financial giants THE DAMAGE IS ALREADY DONE AND IS IRREVERSIBLE!

That is the government’s job. To stop the fraud before it starts. And since the government was complicit with the Wall Street crooks – that’s what caused the meltdown in 2008.

Beezlebub, the colonists rioted and protested because of government control, and crony capitalism.

– Katy

1. I would have prohibited the repeal of Glass-Stegall

2. I would have prohibited the investment banks (IB)from leveraging their holdings 40:1.

3. I would have prohibited TARP/EESA.

4. I would have indicted, prosecuted and jailed rating agency CEOs, CFO, COOs who gave AAA ratings to junk level investments.

5. I would have indicted, prosecuted and jailed IB CEOs, CFOs, COOs who knowingly sold toxic investments to unsuspecting investors while shorting them out the back door.

6. I would have indicted, prosecuted and jailed bank IB CEOs, CFOs, COOs who participated in the laundering of $billions$ of illicit proceeds for international drug cartels.

How’s that for starters, David H?

“These people in the streets rioting and burning flags are not the high moral crowd that refused to take part in the financial fraud”

The people in the streets have every right to be pissed. What they are doing is no different from what the colonists did in 1773 when they boarded the ships in Boston Harbor and threw the crates of tea into the drink. But then you would call that a heroic, patriotic act, wouldn’t you???

If you have not heard Beezl then you are new or have your ears covered. He has repeatedly stated the Wall Street scammers should be in prison and has given numerous ways the country could be fixed or remedied to fix our debt issues.