Robert Sherrill’s piece on S&Ls (from 1990) sums up ‘The Looting Decade’ – and the incredulity that it would be repeated on a global scale. I know I’ve posted this a couple of times before, but it does nail the BIG LIE that nobody could have foreseen the effects of deregulation which underpinned the faith that markets could police themselves:

“Nevertheless, though it is obvious that the tottering commercial banking world needs tighter regulations than ever, the industry and the Administration push on pell-mell for deregulation. In fact, the dismal condition of the industry is being used by the deregulating claque as their strongest, and weirdest, argument. Just as St. Germain, Garn, Pratt and Wall argued that the best way to help zombie thrifts recover was to remove all regulations so that they could “grow out” of their problems, now Bush, Fed chair Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Seidman and others demand that the government dismantle what Seidman calls the “archaic laws” that for many years have controlled commercial banking. They, too, want to “grow out” of their perilous condition. What these laws do is protect the banking industry from its worst instincts by insisting that banks remain banks, and not become gamblers, hucksters and hustlers in other lines as well.

The deregulators will probably make their big power-play next spring, when, under mandate from Congress, the Treasury Department must come up with its “reform” plans for the banks. You can expect the other side to try to sell some blind horses to us, like offering to swap a lower ceiling on deposit insurance for wholesale abandonment of regulations–as if the rotters wouldn’t be just as happy engaging in risky activity under a lower ceiling as they have been gambling under the present one. If there is a double agent to be on guard against, it will be Donald Riegle, chair of the Senate Banking Committee. He and the moneylenders are–could any old saw be more apt?–thick as thieves. Riegle is recorded as receiving $200,900 from S&L officials and PACs between January 1981 and May 1990–second only to California’s Senator Pete Wilson ($243,334). Now that S&L money is seen to be tainted, Riegle has scrambled to redeem his reputation by returning $120,000 of it. But the commercial banks have stuffed his pockets too, and there is no record of his having returned any of that money.

Recently Greenspan–that trustworthy fellow who guaranteed the morality of Keating and was one of the chief boosters of junk-bond purchases by S&Ls–guided his Fed colleagues into a disastrous decision. They ruled that J.P. Morgan (Morgan Guaranty Trust) could trade and sell corporate stocks. With this cloven hoof in the door, other banks will follow, and that will be the death of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Congress passed in 1933 to separate commercial banks from investment banks and thereby control some of the outlawry that had caused thousands of banks to fail. Next they will probably be targeting the Bank Holding Act of 1956, which was intended to keep banking out of commerce, and the McFadden Act, which limits interstate banking.

What Greenspan, Seidman and their gang say to critics is, Oh, we want banks to be banks, too, but we want them to be universal banks. Which can be translated to mean uncontrolled banks, banks completely unfettered by regulations that restrict their operations–in short, pretty much a return to the reckless and lawless 1920s and early 1930s, which, if measured by the drama and excitement of collapsing financial structures, had it all over the 1980s.

Brumbaugh, for one, is dumbfounded by what he’s seeing. “The administration and Congress just don’t want to acknowledge the problem,” he says with a sigh. “This is déjà vu all over again. You can’t believe it’s happening, but there it is.”
Robert Sherrill, The Nation, November 19 1990
http://goo.gl/7qS2I

“When all is said and done there is only one definition of power that has any authentic meaning for man. We have seen all through these pages that man is the animal in evolution who lives a series of paradoxes on which his distinctive humanity is based. So much so that we can say that his fate is to live in the teeth of paradoxes. For an animal with such fate, what would his distinctive strength be? it would have to be the ability to support contradictions,ambiguities, since his own distinctive nature is based on them and is rife with them. Power for man, as the genius of Hegel saw, is the ability to support contradictions, nothing less. It is amazing how we misread reality, how we see power in all the wrong places, all the wrong forms, forms which have nothing to do with our dinstinctive problems. We think we see power in the people with sure beliefs, unshakable convictions, smug self-confidence. Yet these are psychological weaknesses on a planet which is fluid and full of surprises. We think we see power in the ability to dominate and coerce others. Yet history has taught us that such power inevitably makes a slave of and destroys the manipulator whether it be a man or a nation. We think we see power in number, in the deafening chorus of mass enthusiasms and the solid wall of shared opinions. Yet history daily teaches us that nature has no respect for even unanimous misperception of reality, and she has the coldest equanimity for the entusiasms that carry whole popluations into rapture. Nature could only respect the power that typifies a nature, and for man this must be the power to live and endure the paradoxes of his own.” The Birth and Death of Meaning, Ernest Becker.

Just to add, not only have the Rights, Liberties, and Freedoms of the Scottish People (and us Welsh, for example) been kept safe, but their National identity, pride, and self respect has been kept safe too (as well as the differences in Scottish Law – how long will that be safe in the EU?).

Again, the same goes for us in Wales.

All these things are now at terrible risk (and the same goes for the English and Irish etc., too, as well as the rest of the People of Europe).

This corrupt, criminal EU, is destroying us all, and destroying itself in the process.

Just because the protective structure has been attacked and damaged (for rather a long time), is no excuse to leave it.

We need to fix it, because nothing else works, and nothing else can grant us pretty much 300+ years of internal peace.

eta: Also, the catfight and power grab, was prevented, by restricting each to its own’House’ (the Commons, the Lords, and the Monarchy).

We now have the power grab in one House (the Commons, where there is no Democracy any more – and there is no Democracy in the corrupt Assemblies either).

All of it has been done, illegally.

It’s a power grab Ken, and the Scottish People won’t be getting any of it. They will be asset stripped, looted, pillaged, and sucked dry.

The British Constitutional system, is deliberately designed to DEPRIVE power, and not grant power. We have transferred power, and our rule, to the Law (our Common Law, Constitution, and Bill of Rights).

Putting this as simply as possible (it would be easy to run it on too long), there are only three forms of Government possible (Democracy, Aristocracy, and Monarchy/Dictatorship). They all have wonderful strengths, and terrible, self-destructive weaknesses.

The old philosophers all agreed, that the perfect Republic should embody all three. But they didn’t think it was achievable, because there was this insoluble problem, called ‘power sharing’, which would inevitably end up with a catfight and a power grab.

Then along came John Locke, categorically proving what an outrageous lie ‘Divine Right of Kings’ was and is (inventing the scientific method to do it, in the process – Empiricism), and proving the truth of “If the Law makes the King, then the King is subject to the Law”. So at a stroke, the insoluble problem of power sharing, was fixed.

None of them have power, but all are protected by The Law (including us).

This is why The Rule of Law, is literal.

It is how Scotland and the Scottish People have retained their Rights, their Liberties, their Freedoms, for over 300 years, and had internal peace in the process.

The same goes for us here in Wales.

Does anybody really want to go back to the previous system, and its continuous track record of consistent failure and strife?

Well I for one think far too much of the Scottish members of the family, for them to be condemned to such an awful fate.

Their minimum wage now stands at roughly 751.00 euro per month, if the cuts go ahead this will mean approximately that it will stand at about 3.74 euro per hour, 138.38 per 37 hr. week & 7195.00 per annum, Europe’s Mexico ?

Portugal’s rate is about 6.66 euro per hr & Ireland’s 8.65 euro. I wonder whether the Troika will be happy with these rates in our Golem defined ” Race to the bottom”

The above are rough calculations just to make a point, I hope they are correct, if they are wrong I apologise & hope the error is one that benefits Greek families.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

It all comes down to regulation. Greenspan pretended to believe that you could play a football game without a referee. He knew better.

I still get occasional moments of disbelief at the sheer criminality of these guys. It soon passes though, they make Capone, Luciano & Lanksy look like pickpockets. It’s ironic that the mafia supposedly wanted to go legitimate, there doesn’t seem to be anything legitimate, just bigger rackets.

Not mention the brilliant Alex over at the torygraph.

Enjoy http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/alex/