Deregulation is America's greatest policy failure

It's been at work for the past 35 years, and see where it's got us now.

The banks and finance industry, the food we eat, the energy industry, the insurance industry and others have wrecked America at a record pace.

The changes to the tax code, the war on unions and the free trade movement have undermined the middle and lower working classes and sent jobs away to foreign shores.

Of course, the Republicans are using fear of Mexicans as the straw man to deflect attention away from their abject failures.

The unrestrained marketplace never owed its allegiance to America or Americans, because it only worships the almighty dollar.

Greed, definitely, is not good.

Thanks

1977 - Democratic President Jimmy Carter Passes "Community Reinvestment Act," or CRA, designed to encourage banks to reach out to low income communities by offering loans to minorities and the poor.
1995 - Democratic President Bill Clinton revises CRA by making banks meet a quota for a certain number of low income loans. He also increases punishment for banks that dont loan enough money to low income borrowers. This forces banks to write lots of loans that they would not otherwise have written, because the government is forcing them to.
1999 - Democratic President Bill Clinton signs and endorses the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act," or GLBA, designed to make banks profitable in good economic times, as well as poor economic times. The bill allows consumer banks (think checking accounts, savings accounts, etc..) to merge with insurance companies and investment companies, so they all can make money. BUT for a bank to qualify to be a part of the program, you had to have a high CRA score, meaning that you had to have a lot of loans written to low income people. The government was effectively telling banks that if they wanted to be allowed to make money off of the investments of the rich, that they had to also be lending money to the poor. Nice in theory, but look where it has gotten us. Now we are a nation with a bunch of people losing homes they never could afford, and a bunch of banks collapsing bc nobody can pay them back!

Without it none of the current mess would have happened.

if the were able to find work. Dont be so quick to blame your countrymen and women.

Regulating who can marry whom, what consenting adults do in private, when and how a pregnancy can be terminated, what you can take for glaucoma and nausea, what you can wear at the beach, and what you can download has been a growth business with them!

Regulation will kill America's prosperity!

Oh...oh...!


Hey! What did you put in my tea cup?

It tastes like Kool-aid!

As used in political discussion during the last 40-50 years at least, when they say "deregulation," they really mean "deregulation of giant corporations" and that is ALL they mean. They DON'T mean deregulation of individual's private lives and getting big gummint out of our pants, closets, and bookstores. They DO mean that they want to allow the richest, most powerful, and greediest among us to do anything at all, at everyone else's expense.

Every time that some one from the Corporate A Team (Republican Party) or the Corporate B Team (CorpoDems) says anything whatsoever about "deregulation," the response should always include something to the effect, "Let's clarify what you just said. You mean deregulation of giant corporations to allow them to plunder the public, don't you? You don't mean that you want to deregulate ordinary people's lives, do you?"

Similarly, every time they make some wackadoodle bizarre claim about the fantasy of "self-regulation," someone should ask them if they favor self-regulation for other kinds of criminals too. "Self-regulation" is a synonym for "anarchy," which is exactly what the would-be feudal lords really want, for themselves. Self-regulation for you or me is completely off the table and will never fly. To them, "self-regulation" simply means that the greediest, most immoral, and most selfish can do anything they want to.

No one should be surprised that in the "land of the free", individual freedom is regulated and the corporations are free.