Sounds like a plan, let's do it.

we should make this an actual proposal.

This should be one of the tactics of Occupy movement, calling these cronies out using their own tricks.

I agree with him, but he keeps blaming the banks. It's easy to hate the banks, because they are the beneficiaries, but they're not the ones directly robbing us, they're not the ones holding guns, charging taxes, inflating the money supply and providing the cheap money.

The culprits are the government's economic policy + the Fed.

You can't expect a bank not to act like a bank, like a business, and take advantage of the cheap money being thrown at it.

Greed and fear balance each other out. When the Fed comes in with all sorts of guarantees, there is nothing to fear, so the banks get extra greedy. Even if they act too risky, there's no fear of loss or bankruptcy to hold them back, the Fed just waltzes right in and bails them out!

When is this guy going to realize that regulating banks is not the answer, it's the Fed and the government that should be regulated or have their powers removed.

It's this kind of fallacy that allows governments to keep screwing the economy. They use taxpayer money and a printing press carelessly, then blame the banks, capitalism and greed for whatever happens.

It's easy to blame the banks, because the banks and other financial institutions donate/bribe politicians into making it happen. So if they are regulated by law, and can't benefit from this kind of policy, then they won't bribe politicians for it.

And yes, I realize working around corruption shouldn't be tolerated, but laws limiting the power of corruption is just as important as eliminating corruption. Without the limitations you invite more and more corruption through unregulated business and decisions related to them.

Just like the government is founded on the idea of 3 branches of the government limiting each other, business is limited by regulation and society, government is regulated by it's 3 branches and society. Removing the regulations is taking away checks and balances.

Much as all of the new laws and acts tieing different branches and departments of the government together for the sake of the "wars on terrorism/drugs/whatever" is taking away limitations and checks and balances within government.

Sensible guidelines to work within should be the norm, until they show detriment to society. The regulations on banks never threatened society that I've ever seen demonstrated. The reasons were always basically "because it needs to be done!"....much like power company regulations and phone company regulations after being reduced or removed have let to outrageous price increases and quality of service dropping like a rock. They do it all in the name of keeping and making more money, and there's no one but other huge banks/corporations to threaten them.

@Porksandwich The question is, who is out of order? The banks for bribing politicians, or politicians for having so much power to forcibly regulate banking/monetary/financial practices and institutions?

Politicians have their hands all over their businesses, the financial, monetary and banking sectors are already heavily regulated. I'm not saying they're WELL regulated, not at all, but there are tons of regulations in place on everything and that screams to big bankers and businesses, "the power lies with us, politicians. Not with society, not with your clients, not with the market, not with doing good business and taking calculated risks. We dictate everything that is and isn't allowed. If you're not on our good side, we will screw you over".

What you don't seem to realize is that, big banks and big businesses usually lobby for more regulations that benefit them, because the more regulations you have, the bigger the burden is for smaller competitors.

You don't blame the banks for corrupting politicians, but you do blame the politicians for being given so much power? And you think that less regulation is the answer? Banking regulations are irrelevant in this conversation. The only question is whether it should be legal for banks to bribe politicians. As long as politicians are open to bribery, the rich will have enormous sway over them, and most regulations the politicians produce will favour the rich. If campaign contributions were illegal or limited to an amount that most interested parties could afford -- an amount that might help them in a small way, but not in a disproportionate way -- then the rich wouldn't be able to write themselves blank cheques.

So politicians who accept bribes AND banks who bribe them are out of order. The power doesn't like with society, nor with the clients, nor the market, and certainly not with doing good business. The power could lie with those groups if the system were less corrupted by unchecked campaign financing.>> ^renatojj:

@Porksandwich The question is, who is out of order? The banks for bribing politicians, or politicians for having so much power to forcibly regulate banking/monetary/financial practices and institutions?
Politicians have their hands all over their businesses, the financial, monetary and banking sectors are already heavily regulated. I'm not saying they're WELL regulated, not at all, but there are tons of regulations in place on everything and that screams to big bankers and businesses, "the power lies with us, politicians. Not with society, not with your clients, not with the market, not with doing good business and taking calculated risks. We dictate everything that is and isn't allowed. If you're not on our good side, we will screw you over".
What you don't seem to realize is that, big banks and big businesses usually lobby for more regulations that benefit them, because the more regulations you have, the bigger the burden is for smaller competitors.

@messenger maybe you're right about corporations sharing the blame, but lobbying is allowed in the United States, and protected by the Constitution. Do you suggest stopping rich people from using their money or exercising their right to free speech?

What seems like a better solution to you:

a) Change or add to the mountain of regulations to the economy in hopes that rich people don't get away with stealing from society with the help of government, or

b) Limit the government's power over the economy and deregulate it, so that consumers and the market have the power instead of the government; so that businesses would rather "bribe" and lobby consumers, not politicians!

It's like we have an economic dictatorship, and you guys keep wishing for a benevolent dictator with better rules. How about we go the other direction? Let society and the market regulate, not government.

@renatojj

Politicians don't have their hands all over businesses, it's the opposite. Businesses have their hands in the strings that direct the politicians. Which means politicians are not serving society, but serving businesses. There are many examples of things happening that you know are wrong and can see are wrong, but nothing ever happens...why? Because businesses are either making money on them or mitigating money loss by it happening.

Look at nuclear power regulations, they have been loosened and the inspectors are actually limited in what they can inspect so much so that they don't actually see more than 5 or 10% of the workings of a nuclear plant. How can they say something is safe if they see less than 10% of it and those 10% don't even allow them to do tests they used to do?

Oil company regulation, why did the BP oil spill happen? It was because they are not held to standards damn near every other country on the planet holds them to. And when you see more into it, many times the oil inspection agents were going to work for the oil company when they retired. And yet they rarely busted their balls on questionable things and got caught with their pants down many times with not catching violations.....so they probably weren't hired for their inside knowledge on how to best keep the existing equipment up to standards....since they aren't being held to them.


And as for the last post you made...you can't just drop regulation on all of these things. There's countless reasons for it but I'll try to list a few.

1) They basically hold a monopoly in many industries or a small number of very large companies that end up basically being a monopoly, so there would be no counter balance of a free market because the market has never been free to begin with. If it were truly free there'd be 100/1000/10000/100k/1mil businesses in these industries all competing on either features or price because they should all be about as reliable as one another...since we always have to picture the "perfect" free market. I'll bet you can name a couple people who have shit internet service pretty easy or pay a lot for very little.

2) You are putting the policing of industries in the industry hands if you dial back regulation. They already can not regulate themselves. How many companies supported SOPA and now how many more support CISPA? They do what's best for them and they do it cooperatively not independently. That's why you have groups formed of these companies putting bills forward that are basically passed nearly word for word if edited at all by congress critters.

3) We hear all the time about businesses only responsibility is to make money. We don't even hold a person to that standard, an individual has more responsibilities than that...earning a living is probably in the top ten but it's not your sole major responsibility as a member of society. Number 1 could arguably be "obey the law" or "don't be a dick". Business number 1 should probably be don't negatively impact people as your business model....this could be not polluting, keeping a safe work environment, not overworking people, making underhanded deals in the name of profit, making deals you know you will back out of or have no intention to honor, etc. Yes shit happens, but you shouldn't make your business model based on making shit happen to profit. Banks and financial institutes arguably did this with bad mortgages and false rating of these mortgages when selling them.

@messenger

It's not just bribing politicians, but businesses openly courting people for employment after their term of service or the people regulating them. It makes it more profitable to be lenient and not enforce regulations or laws on companies when you'll be making 3x your salary when you go to work for them after kissing their ass for a decade or two. Both the bribes and the business tie ins with Haliburton made the early days of the current war seem pretty shady when you look specifically at Dick Cheney. But it happens with advisors to people in office as well, it's something that really should be stopped because government should be about public service and not service with the intention of landing a sweet gig at some company you helped make a few billion dollars for awhile a public servant.

You can't stop it entirely, but there should definitely be some lawful punishments put in place to make it have to cost the companies exorbitant amounts to court people to court them with the severe punishments placed on people who stray too far from the path. Like prison terms or fines to the tune of percentages of their life savings and 25% of a company's value if they are caught. Unfortunately, the people who would put forth these laws are the same people who would be directly affected by them....because they are all business owners anymore...it costs too much money to get into office and rich people are the only people who tend to have the wealth/power to pull it off.

So......regulations on companies it the best you can hope for, make it so politicians can't offer them anything worth the huge donations they make to these people because regulations would make the attempts worthless, unless of course it was deregulation. Which they've already done and continue to do, to the detriment of all. Profits are up for all the big companies sometimes higher than pre-crash, and yet they employ less people than they did 5 years ago. How are they pulling THAT off....they are cutting corners or doing something shady somewhere to keep earning like that despite being less capable of producing like they did prior when a lot more people had disposable income.

@Porksandwich all good points. There is corruption and a lot of collusion between government and corporations. Can we consider the possibility that this collusion happens mostly because the role of government is not well defined, because the economy is a grey area, because businesses covet the power politicians have?

I don't see churches fighting over privileges with politicians, not since a clear separation of church and state was established.

I don't see big media networks fighting over censorship rights with politicians, because freedom of speech mostly outlaws censorship by the government.

Do you see where I'm getting at?

The businesses that hold a monopoly, most of the time, hold it because of regulation. If you remove the regulation, you remove the obstacles for competition. The business might still hold the monopoly even for a long while, maybe decades, but any dissatisfaction by consumers is an opportunity for competitors to step in, slowly pushing the monopoly to be more efficient or risk being toppled.

If we dial back regulation, that doesn't mean there won't be any regulation, that the industry will only answer to itself. Regulation will come from consumers, clients, advertisers, consumer groups, unions, shareholders, and competitors. Didn't GoDaddy pay dearly for supporting SOPA? That's a great example of society punishing a business for an unpopular decision.

Besides, we can't consider it unfair for a business to establish a monopoly or a cartel, if we're ok with workers forming a union. That's a double standard because, in essence, they're basically the same thing. I don't judge either to be good or bad, fair or unfair, it's all part of the market and the right for people to freely associate.

You are absolutely right when you say people are held to more standards than just making money, but who establishes those standards? Are there laws dictating that we shouldn't be dicks, that we should never take advantage of others or "negatively impact people"? Those aren't laws, it's social pressure and your reputation that ****regulate**** you to act as a better person.

Let society and people hold businesses to better standards, not laws and politicians.

@renatojj

Church has high interested in religious candidates being elected. Most of the debates going on in politics are based on religious philosophy. Few off the top of my head are abortion, creationism, and women's rights. They've been going against the grain of the Constitution trying to get creationism which is a arguably religion based subject taught in schools. Which in turn possibly gets them more followers, which in turn gets them more tithing and more people in their "group" giving them more power. In fact I would argue they are specifically trying to erode the line between church and state with these arguments, injecting religion based reasons into many of the arguments.

Big media networks push for things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 where the reason for the bill is not actually what ends up happening. It was supposed to deregulate and open up the market for competition and instead it allowed them to reconsolidate by buying up competitors. And they largely don't fight with censorship on curse words because generally it drives off their audience, and those networks that don't have to censor curse words charge for the privilege of hearing them and seeing some nudity to boot. And they also support SOPA-like bills which are essential a blanket tool to censor the web....they also support monitoring and traffic shaping on the networks they control...which is another potential avenue for censorship.

You'll have to be more specific on what you're getting at......all these groups are eroding divisions we built through regulation and have been doing so steadily since the 80s at every opportunity across industries.

I've already shown that given the chance, they buy up competition to remain a monopoly. Look at ISPs, look at all the oil companies we USED to have. Look at the media conglomerates that own the majority of your radio stations ( I think there's two major radio networks, but they have like a million different stations under the same banners so it LOOKS like choice). How the record labels and movie industries are all tied together and often even tied into the same parent company that owns your ISP. Cell phone industry, ATT trying to buy T Mobile which would have brought it down to 3 major providers and they did it in the name of "better service" but still haven't announced plans to build out their infrastructure since the deal went through...why? Because it wasn't about better service, it was about buying up a competitor that offered plans at prices people preferred.

When people are unhappy with their ISPs they've tried to form local government run coop non-profit ISPs, and they get sued by the huge companies who refuse to service their area. It's happened multiple times. With regulation, they would have to provide internet to those places in a timely manner instead of preventing people from doing their own thing.

Did GoDaddy pay dearly for supporting SOPA? I heard they lost 30k subscribers at some point, but did they really? You'll have to show me on that. GoDaddy did lots of terrible things before it, yet they were still a huge provider and still are. They cybersquat on domain names people search for and allow you to buy them at "auction" from them when you try to look up if it's taken or not..they snatch it up to sell to you. They also give away people's domain names with no repercussions and a myriad of other things. Sounds like it needs a regulatory body with some teeth on it to make them act right or shut them down.

Unions are actually a really good way to fight monopolies and under the table deals, but they've been systematically villified. And unions aren't monopolies if they aren't mandatory, and most places are not fully unionized anymore. Often times they will have sections with union employees to do government work and non-union to do non-government work. Non-union guys make half the rate of union guys usually, and have less protections in place to keep themselves from getting shafted. But I don't really see how a union is a monopoly when there are lots of unions and lots of individuals in a union who make decisions for themselves and not as a collective like a company would. IE a company has a "head" that directs it and unions are a collective of individuals. Companies are people after all, unions are not (they are made up of people).

There are laws governing behavior usually based roughly on societal standards. Like pot being illegal is kind of against most of the societies beliefs, yet it remains illegal is an example of where it doesn't quite track. But overall we have laws that say you can't write a check that you know won't cash. Drunk driving, trespassing, vandalism, theft.....yelling fire in a crowded building.......setting off the fire alarm for fun.....etc. Giving people the finger isn't against the law....well probably not in most places so that might fall under social pressure. But we see that social pressure fails miserably at stopping bad behavior, so we have laws to enforce behavior...like not stealing and not murdering. This is society and people holding other people to standards, without the law to judge and convict them by the only thing you have left is personal interpretation and meeting out punishment by each individual or vigilante justice.

If you don't regulate business there is nothing stopping them, because nothing about our market is free. You can't have a free market without perfect information. You can't know every possible thing going on, so you will never have perfect information even if it was possible. So you will have swindlers and knock offs, pyramid schemes, etc. And without laws and regulations on these things, you will never be able to punish the company for what they did in a court of law.

Even if they were 100% above the board honest, they'd still be sourcing their materials from overseas and getting inferior materials to what you are paying for. It happens to the military all the time right now. They buy a bunch of nuts and bolts and some of them are chinese knockoffs that fail well after the installation is done and the machine is in operation. They can't catch them because china is basically lawless when it comes to producing goods for knock off purposes. It could just as easily be a US source doing it if we de-regulated everything and made no way for people to sue them into oblivion...because the damage would be done as soon as you buy a knock off and it fries the rest of your stuff.

The definition of "free market" right now means they want to be able to buy stuff cheap as shit from overseas and charge you US built prices for it. And when it comes to financial industry "free market" means they want to have speculation upon speculation to where the financial industry has 10-100x more money leveraged than what actually exists. It's a house of cards if they can just inflate it without any kind of acceptable risks being enforced.

Sign me up. I'll move to Canada.