Friday, September 26, 2008

Decade of Decadence

A lot of us, myself included, poked fun at Nader during his presidential run because of our perception of him as an old crank. He may well be an old crank, but he had it right while others had it wrong, at least with regard to scandalous banking.

Alert reader Jon sent me this article which is worth a moment (or two!) of your time. For those of you who aren't link-clickers, Nader rather eerily described the events we've been watching unfold. The final paragraph of the piece suggests a scheme for keeping regulators accountable, and I'd love to know if that ever came to pass. If these goons managed to do this much damage in spite of that, well, they are even less scrupulous than I thought.

Nader was wrong about one thing back in 1999, though. He thought we'd look back and wonder how we could have all been so asleep through this disastrous deregulation. Hardly anybody is wondering. We're just busily believing President Panic that we need to cough up lots of money to make it all better. This, my friends, is what happens when "regular" people refuse to take any interest whatsoever in yucky old politics. No government oversight, except by people we label as cranks and then ignore. Is coughing up $700 billion really less distasteful than paying attention every now and then?

My feelings on this bailout are the same as yesterday. Many thanks to my bro for pointing me to the perfect (tasteless, crass, morbid) picture to help me summarize:

Jump!

Posted on Natuba

4 comments:

Cujo359 said...

I've been trying to get my mind wrapped around this thing for the last couple of weeks. The only thing I know for sure is that the people who made the decisions aren't the ones who will suffer the consequences. As long as that's true, we'll probably be doomed to repeat this scenario every few decades.

I have no idea how to change that, though. That idea of paying regulators several years after they leave office might be a good idea. That's particularly true if they apply that same logic to company CEOs.

Joe said...

I poached the pic with credit. And, I'm right with you on all this banking/stock mess.

SWE said...

Your post hit my reader just a few minutes before your comment. :) A picture being worth a thousand words, eh?

Hubby and I had a good laugh over your post-it picture this evening.

Anonymous said...

Nader has been so right on so many things for so long, it is sad and a bit terrifying to see him aging and fading into obscurity with no replacement in sight.