ANS -- How's that workin' for ya USA?

Here's an opinion piece by Chip Shirley, the Dixie Dove, on the economy.  The 60 Minutes link goes to a good but long article on the financial meltdown and who really knew what was going on.  There are links in the article to the 60 Minutes piece, I think: I haven't yet clicked on any of them: I just read the article.  It was really good. 
The core problem was that the companies that were supposed to rate the credit-worthiness of financial instruments were being paid by the companies that made the financial instruments, so they rated them AAA even when they were junk because that's what the boss wanted to hear.  In other words, the fox was guarding the henhouse.  Since when is that okay? Since Ronald Reagan.
Find it here:  http://chipshirley.blogspot.com/2011/06/hows-that-workin-for-ya-usa.html?showComment=1308548494452#c2922292464744124876   
--Kim

6/18/11

How's that workin' for ya USA?

Pay Us Back Now!

Corporate America put us in the shape we're in right now by any reasonable standard of measurement and they are doing well, unlike the rest, so, they have a large debt to pay in taxes by any fair measurement. They totally influenced policy and they crashed our economy. We did deregulate the financial industries in the 1980's and 90's and that was largely at the behest of Corporate American lobbying and donations.

It was the unregulated Ratings Industry which allowed millions of unscrutinized mortgages to be put in gold plated bundles and rated Grade A. This is the exact type of thing that goes all the way back to just before the Great Depression.

Corporate American donations and lobbying has MADE policy in the USA since Reagan took office.

Now they're stacking up against President Obama in every way shape and form.

How's that workin' for ya USA?
I'm not saying that people didn't get mortgages they couldn't afford. That's true, but the BIGGER PROBLEM that caused the whole global economy to bottom out was that the unregulated ratings agencies bundled rotten mortgages up into mega financial products and gave them perfect AAA ratings WITHOUT SCRUTINIZING THEM which is required by law! But since we had DE-REGULATED the finance industry in the 80s and 90s they weren't caught and then finally the xhit hit the fan!


Here are two links for proof. The first link is to a brilliant spot from 60 minutes on the subject that is a MUST SEE and it's only about 10 minutes. The second link is to a graph showing how bank failures virtually disappeared after the Glass-Steagall regulatory act was passed in 1932 and then failures surged again after that act was repealed in 1980.

60 Minutes on Cause of Crash:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/12/60minutes/main6292458.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Bank failure Graph:
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-087.pdf
Posted by CHIP at 7:37 PM