I can respect the clarity of your position, SoCal. I'm squarely in the camp of those who feel it was right to bail out the banks in order to protect the larger society from the ripple effects of the criminal actions of a corrupt few.
The solution was a quick fix and a lazy one though. I'm sure that someone could have been prosecuted for the mortgage fraud, even if Glass Steagall was shot down. You see, it wasn't just home owners and aspiring home owners that were conned with tricky mortgage contracts, it was the selling of mortgage backed securities around the world to public and possibly private investors in a fraudulent way. It might have even been Moody's that rubber stamped the MBSs AAA+ knowing they were really junk bond nuclear waste under a different name. If it wasn't Moody's, then it was someone equally as "trustworthy" and prestigious, like Standard and Poor. (Actually it was both of those firms and others.) Either way, it's RICO. So lots of people should have gone down...and the homeowners should have been bailed out [sooner] and not just the banks.
I agree that a lot of people should've gone down. The corruption and reckless behavior trickles all the way down on every level though. I view bailouts as rewarding bad behavior, and propping up the very bad models of institutions that need to fail in order to rebuild a healthy economy. I think that we will see in the upcoming years that major problems weren't avoided or fixed, just postponed and dragged out.
All that is needed is a repeal of the repeal of Glass Steagall. That one piece of legislation prevented 1929 from happening again all the way until 2008.
Now maybe Graham Leach Bliley is repealed. I am not sure. But it needs to go if it isn't.
"For us, rubbin'out a Mustache was just like makin' way for a new building, like we was in the construction business."
