8/11/2008

A Loss Of Trust



I certainly agree that ethical behavior in the marketplace would be nice. But history tells us that it isn't going to happen.

Whether it's the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s, the savings and loan disaster in the 1980s, the collapse of Enron or the present mortgage meltdown, our history is replete with examples that show that trusting the elites that dominate the marketplace is not in the best interest of the American people.

While far from perfect, government regulation is much better than hoping for ethical behavior in the marketplace.

Why does it seem that whenever one of our great business and financial crises occur, we discover that the government agency that is supposed to regulate our corporate and financial institutions has been cut back so drastically that it can't do its job?

We need to connect the dots.

We need a government that is responsible to the people and is willing to provide regulatory agencies with the funding, staff, and expertise needed to regulate the marketplace. We need better oversight of those agencies.

We need leaders whose spines don't turn to jelly when confronted by the rhetoric about the sanctity of the free market and the evils of regulation.


Stan Markowitz
Baltimore

1 comment:

Roadkill said...

Sunny,

Of course, the Teapot Dome Scandal was intra-governmental, with the Secretary of the Interior (Albert Fall) convincing the hapless President Harding to transfer Naval Oil Reserves at Teapot Dome, WY to his department, then secretly leasing them out. The government was the perp in that deal; the fox was in charge of the chicken-coop.

As for the “S&L crisis,” the Enron implosion, and the current “mortgage meltdown,” it seems to me that the so-called victims were asleep at the wheel. Didn’t anyone ever tell these hapless types that if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is?

Let the free market work. Let people who bought mortgages they couldn’t afford, and lenders who did not do due diligence regarding loan qualifications, pay with losing homes and losing their businesses. Those mistakes will not be made in the future.

The last thing we need is a bunch of clueless, egomaniacal Congressmen and Senators to start planning our business for us. They aren’t at 9% popularity for nothing.