NYT: What Americans Need to Know About the Financial Crisis

Excerpts NYT editorial "Hard Truths About the Bailout ":

Taxpayers have every right to be alarmed and angry. The latest plan is not necessarily a bad one, and officials had to move quickly to prevent credit markets from seizing up.

But make no mistake, this crisis could have been avoided if regulators had enforced rules and officials had dared to question risky lending and other dubious practices.

...

The new plan would commit taxpayer money to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of troubled loans and other mortgage-related securities from banks and Wall Street firms. It is based on the reasonable premise that as long as institutions are stuck with those assets, the flow of credit, the economy’s lifeblood, will be constrained, or as in the past week, all but frozen.

Congress, with one eye on this week’s volatile Dow and the other on November’s election, could authorize the plan as early as next week.

...

The regulatory failure, in turn, was grounded in the Bush administration’s magical belief that the market, with its invisible hand, works best when it is left alone to self regulate and self correct. The country is now paying the price for that delusion.

If lawmakers and administration officials really want to restore confidence, the bailout must be only a first step. The hard work of establishing and enforcing the regulations that are needed for a truly trustworthy financial system, still lies ahead.

Read rest at source.

I'm still buzzing over a mainstream news article talking about lil' Bushie and his magical invisible hand."

tags: financial crisis  bush  john mccain  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit