The Three Big Lessons We Didn’t Learn from the Economic Crisis

roguetelemetry:

robertreich:

Ten years ago, after making piles
of money gambling with other people’s money, Wall Street nearly imploded, and
the outgoing George W. Bush and incoming Obama administrations bailed out the
bankers.

America should have learned three
big lessons from the crisis. We didn’t, to our continuing peril.

First unlearned lesson: Banking is a risky
business with huge upsides for the few who gamble in it, but bigger
downsides for the public when those bets go bad.

Which means that safeguards are
necessary. The safeguards created after Wall Street’s 1929 crash worked for
over four decades. They made banking boring.

But starting in the 1980s, they
were watered down or repealed because of Wall Street’s increasing thirst for
profits and its growing political clout. As politicians from both parties grew
dependent on the Street for campaign funding, the rush to deregulate turned
into a stampede.

It began in 1982 when Congress and the Reagan administration deregulated
savings and loan banks – allowing them to engage in risky commercial lending,
while continuing to guarantee them against major losses.

Not surprisingly, the banks got
into big trouble, necessitating a taxpayer-funded bailout.

The next milestone came in 1999,
when Congress and the Clinton Administration, under then Treasury Secretary
Robert Rubin, repealed the Glass-Steagall Act – a 1930s safeguard that had
prohibited banks from gambling with commercial deposits. (For the record, I was
no longer in the Cabinet.)

Then in 2000, Congress and Clinton
barred the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating most
over-the-counter derivative contracts, including credit default swaps.

The coup de grace came in 2004,
when George W. Bush’s Securities and Exchange Commission allowed investment
banks to hold less capital in reserve.

All of this ushered in the 2008 near meltdown – which was followed by another attempt to impose safeguards, the
Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. 

And now? The Street’s political
clout is as great as ever, which explains why the Dodd-Frank safeguards are now
being watered down – clearing the way for another crisis.

The second lesson we should have
learned but didn’t is how widening inequality makes our economy susceptible to financial disaster.  

In the decades leading up to 2008,
stagnant wages caused many Americans to go deep into debt – using the rising
values of their homes as collateral. Much the same thing had happened in the
years leading up to 1929.

Wall Street banks were delighted to
accommodate – lending willy-nilly and often in predatory ways – until the
housing and debt bubbles burst.

And now? The underlying problem of
stagnant wages, with most economic gains going to the top, is still with us.
Once again, consumers are deep in debt – inviting another crisis.

The third big lesson we didn’t
learn concerned the rigging of American politics. After the crisis, many
Americans realized that Wall Street, big corporations, and the wealthy had
essentially bought up our democracy. 

Americans saw the Street get
bailed out while homeowners, suddenly owing more on their homes than the homes
were worth, got little or nothing.

Millions lost their jobs, savings,
pensions, and homes, but the bankers and big investors came out richer than
before.

Bankers who committed serious fraud
escaped accountability. No executive went to jail. Big banks like Wells Fargo
continued to break laws with impunity.

Many officials involved in deregulating
the Street became top executives in the Wall Street banks that benefited from
deregulation. Some involved in writing the Dodd-Frank Act are now employed by
the same financial institutions that are watering it down.

Meanwhile, big corporations and
wealthy individuals continue to flood Washington with money, making it
the capital of “crony capitalism.”

Widespread outrage at all this
fueled the Tea Party on the Right and the brief “Occupy” movement on the Left.
Both eventually morphed into the two anti-establishment candidacies of 2016 –
authoritarian populist Donald Trump and democratic populist Bernie Sanders.

And now? Anti-establishment fury
remains the strongest force in American politics.

Trump has been using it to conjure
up racist and xenophobic conspiracies and to create the most authoritarian
regime in modern American history. He promised to “drain the swamp” but has
made it bigger and filthier.

Democrats don’t know whether to
simply oppose Trump and his authoritarianism, or get behind a reform agenda to
wrest control of politics and the economy from the moneyed interests. 

But to do the latter they’d have to
take on those that have funded them for decades. I wish I had more confidence
they will. 

Sad to say, ten years after the
near meltdown of Wall Street we seem to have learned very little. Only worse:
We now have Trump.

Republican-controlled congress also rolled back most of the Dodd-Frank Act. Wages remain stagnant as only corporations are benefiting from this “great economy”.  No one is putting money into circulation; the poor and cash-strapped can’t, the rich hoard off-shore.   This led up to the 2008 crisis seeing banks are letting companies and individuals run up huge debt with the low interest.  It’s not a sexy situation like a “tech bubble” but it’s root causes people ignore.