Moving Towards Sanity in Crazy Times
The Rubin/Summers changes to financial regulation combined with the Bush administration's appointments of the worst set of regulators since the 1920s (at least) created an environment where the big banks became monsters capable of destroying our economy. And they did, creating the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They quite literally broke our economy, and while things have stabilized some over the panic atmosphere of late 2008/early 2009, it is still broken.
What has also become broken is our ability to govern. Between the absurd filibuster rules and the abuse of them , and the huge and wealthy special interests (the financial behemoths above all), the system has the worst kind of sclerosis built into it. If the minority party and the power house lobbies want to shut things down, they can just do it.
Between the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the emergence of completely unregulated "dark" derivative markets (where no light of day is ever seen), and the laissez-faire regulators of the Bush administration, our country is in the grip of economic powers that have far greater economic and political power than any set of institutions at least since Teddy Roosevelt finally began to tame the robber barons over a century ago. Ponder this fact for a moment: six megabanks control assets amounting to more than 60% of the country's gross domestic product. That is unfathomable. How does our economy ever function under the weight of that kind of concentration of wealth and power? How does our democracy? And with our government so dysfunctional, how do we make the changes we need to make?
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