July 16, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

FREE MARKET ONLY WORKS FOR SOME

Right-wingers idolize the "free market." To hear them speak, you would think we lived in a virtual Garden of Eden before there was regulation of markets. Read a little history and you find out differently, of course, but history and reading are not trademarks of right-wing "thought." You really only have to go back to the Great Depression to see what a miserable failure free markets are. It took the interventions and innovations of the New Deal to save the United States economy. Right-wingers would rather spit about "socialism" than look at the real world. We're seeing the poison fruit of free market orthodoxy now: the bank crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, rocketing gasoline and food costs, and the incestuous relationship between big corporations and the federal government. This column by Peter G. Gosselin is at www.latimes.com:

Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.

"We're at a hinge point," said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who helped craft President Clinton's market-friendly agenda during the 1990s. "The strong presumption in favor of markets, which has dominated public policy since the late 1970s, has been thrown very much into question."

Now, to a degree not seen in years, politicians and outside experts are looking with favor at more, not less, government involvement in the economy.

REGULATION IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Imagine, if you will, driving your car on roads and freeways with no rules. Everyone would do what they wanted. It would be survival of the fittest. There would be no pesky rules about speed limits and merging and stopping at lights or signs. It would be horrifying. But that is essentially what right-wingers want in the economy. We're supposed to believe that big corporations will police themselves and that the "market' will make them toe the line. It's absolute nonsense. What's more, it's a prescription for disaster. This column by Cenk Uygur is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Complete deregulation is an intellectually indefensible position. It is also the current Republican platform. We have been trained, and yes even brainwashed, into believing that the government is a bad thing and the less you have of it, the better. That is until of course your house is burning down, then all of a sudden government help -- in the form of the fire department -- seems like a pretty good idea.

The reason we have government is because it serves a role that we need in society. Police, fire department, public education, common defense and financial regulation of the markets. If you don't have a check on insider trading, the rich get richer and the average guy gets screwed. So, you need the cops of Wall Street. But this isn't just the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is every regulatory agency that watches over the financial industry to protect the interests of all of us.

Even Adam Smith realized the need for government regulation. And it is a perverse situation we find ourselves in that I even have to make the case for such fundamental and obvious points. But yet, here is the campaign for one of the major party candidates for president hiring as their top economic adviser the man who embodies this bloodlust for limitless deregulation. This is probably the one person who best represents all that is wrong with radical deregulation. His name is Phil Gramm.