Nationalizing the banks, regime change, and William Jennings Bryan
Just a few short years ago, no one would have thought this sentence even a remote possibility:
Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials.
The US government is considering nationalizing the banks. Mull that over.
This crisis is a direct consequence of deregulation and failed oversight. This is the consequence of the fundamentalist devotion to deregulation among the anti-oversight, anti-accountability, objectivist sleaze-bags who cloak their corrupt worldview under the innocuous term "free market:"
Fed officials increasingly talk about the challenge they face with a phrase that President Bush used in another context: "regime change."
This regime change refers to a change in the economic environment so radical that, at least for a while, economic policy makers will need to suspend what are usually sacred principles: minimal interference in free markets, gradualism and predictability.
If William Jennings Bryan were alive today, would he give a speech like this?
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of credit default swaps. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of collateralized debt obligations.
OK, maybe that needs some work. But it should be abundantly clear by now that people like Phil Gramm and John McCain should have no place in the formation of American economic policy. The costs are simply too high.