Forum Post: Current Financial Crisis - should we blame Wall Street or Washington?
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 10, 2012, 4:08 p.m. EST by Democracy101
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Who is more to blame for the current financial crisis? Wall Street or Government?
Wall Street and Government are one and the same.
If a corrupt cop is colluding with the crooks that are wrecking havoc in the village, both are gulity as hell. It's only fair. Check out the poster for 'THE HORRIBLE BOSSES, THE WALL STREET MOVIE' and you will find Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson there together with Dick Fuld and Lloyd Blankfein.
http://www.maverickonomics.com/2012/01/10/horrible-bosses-the-wall-street-movie/
Wall Street runs government. That's why the regulatory laws were repealed in the 90s, capital requirements were repealed in 2002-3, all at the behests of the Finance interests that have unlimited influence on Washinton DC.
Ron Paul moles will insist on repeating their "blame the government" talking point (literally - they passed down instructions on ronpaulforums.com to spam this forum with 'blame the government' talking points) but the simple, basic fact of the 2008 collapse was that it was allowed by Libertarian-style DEregulation of the finance industry.
but at the end of day, it's up to the government to pass regulatory legislation..and that's the only way this can be solved. So since government is the only one that can provide the solution...isnt it assigned the blame for not doing it yet.
I blame the puppeteer rather than the puppet. But that's because I'm not a Ron Paul mole.
Government. We dont elect the greedy bastards of wallstreet. But we do elect the gov to regulate them.
The gov is our police against the corps. And they have sided with the enemy.
Plenty of blame for Both.
Yes, but if you had to pick, incorporating evidence of course, on which side does the blame fall on more?
Alan Greenspan it's all Alan Greenspan. He loosened up money every time it looked like a bit of a recession, he pushed for deregulation and law changes that favored reckless trading and almost no one objected because everyone was making money and ignoring the risks that were building up. Remember that Reagan was the guy who started running up America's debt and he was the guy who appointed Greenspan. If you deregulate the banks and they behave like children, take huge risks and destroy the economy ---you can blame government for not keeping the children away from the candy. To bad our bankers are children who obviously need to be regulated.
Both
evidence?
I put a Mouse in a box. Than I put a cat in a box . I go back one hour latter no mouse. I know Mr Cat ate the mouse. I did not see it. evidance is for a court room,not court of public opinion.
WallStreet -Is- Wahington... Washington -Is- Wallstreet... I think BOTH must be responsible for writing & enacting crap like this:
::::::::::::::::Why 308,127,404 Americans Are Going To Get Hosed::::::::::::::::
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-why-308127404-americans-are-going-get-hosed
-01/11/2012-
Last week, the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the US Treasury Department, published its 2011 annual report... http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/files/annual_report_fy2011.pdf ...There are a few numbers that are pretty startling.
We’ve discussed before that FinCEN is the executive agency tasked with ensuring that every US banker is an unpaid government spy through Suspicious Activity Reports.
A Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR, includes details of any transaction that may be deemed ‘suspicious’. Naturally, there’s no clear guidance on what is/is not considered suspicious. Banks, brokerages, money service businesses, precious metals dealers… even casinos are required by law to fill them out.
If you withdraw an unusual amount of cash from your bank account, that could be deemed suspicious. If you set up a new payee in your billpay service, that could be deemed suspicious. Anything and everything is fair game.
Banks and other businesses who do not fill out SARs face hefty penalties, including imprisonment. If they disclose to a customer that s/he is the subject of a SAR, they have hefty penalties, including imprisonment.
When push comes to shove and they have to choose between a nasty penalty, or submitting a SAR about your unusual cash withdrawal, which option do you think they’ll pick?
Unsurprisingly, nearly 1.5 million ‘suspicious activity reports’ were filed across the US banking system in 2011, well over twice the number reported in 2004. On top of this, there were an additional -14.8 million- ‘currency transaction reports’ filed in 2011, a 6% jump over last year.
It’s an unfortunate trend which highlights not only the end of financial privacy, but also the massive amount of data being collected by the government to keep tabs on its citizens.
According to this year’s report, a full 36 distinct federal law enforcement agencies requested information from FinCEN (and even more who haven’t). Three dozen. And that doesn’t include state or local law enforcement.
That there are this many federal law enforcement agencies to begin with is mind-boggling… let alone the thought that some knucklehead at the Fish and Wildlife Service has access to bank records.
This is one reason why international diversification is so important– the likelihood of such collection and monitoring is greatly reduced when you bank overseas. Moreover, should one of these dozens of agencies or courts decide that your ‘suspicious activity’ warrants locking you out of your accounts, they have zero jurisdiction overseas.
This is a common tactic in the US; financial activity is one of the many, many areas with a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ burden of proof. You don’t even need to be doing anything wrong (which is the case most of the time this happens) for one of these agencies to freeze your account ‘pending investigation’ with a simple phone call. Good luck getting it unfrozen.....
(((Continue Reading this article Here))) http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/why-308127404-americans-are-going-to-get-hosed/
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Washington. They pass the laws, wall street money corrupts, but if lawmakers had a set, they would not take a bribe.
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Unions and Obama have zero to do with this banking mess, Obama's big problem is that he caves to the idiot GOP. What do unions have to do with credit default swaps, eurobonds ,CDO's leverage , banking risk, massive fed bailouts for wall streets gambling addicts ? honestly all ya'll fox news viewers need to turn off the TV and read a few books. I'm sure Romney the corporate raider will be getting your vote. We'll see if he fires any of the X Goldman execs in Washington ---My bet is he won't.
demcapitalist - so whose more to blame? Gov't or Wall Street? The puppet or the puppeteer?
Wall street in made up of opportunists, it's the nature of the beast. It's up to the government to make sure that the opportunists don't take to much risk (they will if you let them it's what they do) and jeopardize the wealth of the country. We failed to do that under Greenspan's fed. We are still failing, MF Global is evidence of that. Who knows how many trades like the one that killed MF Global are out there. MF Global and JP Morgan set an awful precedent stealing customer funds. We need some law changes and it will be up to government to see that it gets done.
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