Dumber Than Dirt
Rudy Giuliani was on one of the talking head shows tonight on my Mother’s TV [she’s crocheting a baby afghan for a volunteer group, and turns the TV on when she knits or crochets] spouting the standard Repub mantra about the economic meltdown.
According to Rudy we have to lower taxes to be competitive with other nations. This ignores the reality that the US has had the lowest tax rates of any developed nation for decades – it’s not the taxes.
He also said we have to reduce the regulations on business. The prime reason the banks are in trouble over the sub-prime loans is because no one was enforcing the regulations when it could have been stopped, and Alan Greenspan encouraged people to buy these “creative” mortgages when they should have been locking in low fixed rates. If the Hedgemony had at least attempted to enforce the pitiful regulations that do exist, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
The lesson of the Great Depression was that you can’t trust the banks and businesses to act honestly, you have to regulate them for the survival of society. Reagan took the leash off and we have been paying the price ever since.
5 comments
The bank that has my money didn’t do subprime loans. As they say, they are “fiscally conservative”, and they mean it. They continued to use the stricter criteria, so they aren’t part of the chaos.
Better than that, I shut my 401(k) at the end of last year, and that money is now in an IRA at the conservative bank. At least if was out before the grand roller-coaster hit.
My Mother dumped the market when her broker tried to charger her $75 as a management fee. When they can’t even make enough money to cover the management fees, to hell with them.
Everything is in one or another form of savings making 4.5 to 5% with local banks beginning to offer 5 month CDs so they don’t get locked in at a higher rate. Banks can still make money the old fashioned way, by being banks.
it is the lack of regulations that got us to this mess….
but of course the uber-rich friends of rudy wouldnt like that…..
If they really wanted to talk about being competitive, we would have universal healthcare, releaving companies from escalating healthcare costs. Foreign companies do not have to worry about financing healthcare, their governments make sure that folks have access to healthcare so they can be healthy enough to work.
A few months ago Toyota decided to build their new hybrid factory in Canada because, even with the higher taxes it was cheaper than paying for health insurance in the US. The US automakers are being killed by the wrong choice of vehicles and the cost of health care, not taxes and regulations. They make money in the EU, where taxes are higher and the regulations are more stringent.
Hell, DC, they want to be able to maximize profits with no concern for anything else. Laws are for the little people.