I just read that article in Rolling Stone. I don't see the Fed being independent from Congress much longer if the truth of its current behavior becomes well established by the people.

I'm not sure how moving it to the oversight of Congress would change anything. We all know how the repubs handled business and she named three of them as sponsors for the bill that helped to enable that mess but what she didn't note that I noticed was that we had a Dem President and I'm pretty sure they still had control of the Senate at that point too, repubs had the House and Dems the other two.

It couldn't have passed without BOTH parties involved, same as too many other things over the last few years. Same as with the bailouts that didn't contain oversight or control, same with the tax breaks for the rich even as their incomes were already at record levels, same with a lot of things.

We're asking one band of incompetents or thieves to take over for the next and expecting that something will really change for it. The blame in the end falls on us, the voters. We just don't care enough to get past the "who do I LIKE" simplistic shit and think for a change, that would mean missing a few reality TV shows and that's a price we aren't willing to pay. We got the government that we deserved in the end because we simply didn't care enough to demand better or to learn about the issues.

Just want to say I think the traffic lights analogy is the best I've heard. I would only add that Greenspan thought everyone would just give way to each other because getting into a traffic accident isn't in your self interest, yet in every country where they have weakly defined traffic rules, they drive like maniacs.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print

There's good regulation and bad, good deregulation and bad. Look at how much airline prices fell after deregulation as a moderately successful example of how dereg can work. Look at the mess of the energy industry in California as an example of how not to dereg stuff. She comes off as a blithering idiot by claiming that all deregulation is bad, and that we should huzzah for more regulation (when regulation often has a severe chilling effect on an economy.)

It may sound odd coming from a libertarian, but there are times when you need more laws, and times when you need less. As a libertarian, I think that less is usually more, but laws ARE necessary instruments - anarchy is bad - and laws are important tools for dealing with fraud. Of course, you'll end up with situations where the cure (Sarbanes-Oxley) causes even more problems than the fraud it was trying to prevent (Enron-like schemes), AND have a chilling effect on the economy as well. I'm very grateful my corporations are small and not public, or the overhead of having to deal with it would drive me insane and really hurt our bottom line.

Having a byline that the GOP is responsible for the current mess is nearly fraudulent. It was the GOP that was calling for MORE regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and criminal idiots like Barney Frank and Maxine Waters were responsible for blocking it. They were as responsible as anyone in the government for our current mess, but the press gives them a complete pass.

ShakaUVM: " She comes off as a blithering idiot by claiming that all deregulation is bad, and that we should huzzah for more regulation..."

You come off as both a blithering idiot and a scoundrel for setting up a fallacious strawman argument; nowhere in this clip does Maddow (or her guest) talk of deregulation beyond the financial sector of Wall Street.

Robbers in spaceships?! Police on horseback?! Heavens! What shall we ever do?!

You come off as both a blithering idiot and a scoundrel for setting up a fallacious strawman argument; nowhere in this clip does Maddow (or her guest) talk of deregulation beyond the financial sector of Wall Street.
Did you even listen to the clip? She talks about the cult of deregulation in the Republican party, which certainly extends beyond Wall Street, and certainly has been successful in Wall Street some of the time.

ShakaUVM: "She comes off as a blithering idiot by claiming that all deregulation is bad, and that we should huzzah for more regulation ..."

ShakaUVM: "did you even listen to the clip?"

Of course. I listened to the clip again, before I posted, just to make sure I was correct.

Are you a Russian gymnast? Because that stretch of yours is amazing. Nice try though, bub. Please then locate for us where Maddow claims that "all deregulation is bad."