What Just Happened?

If you are sitting around on this Monday morning like I am feeling dazed and confused after a weekend of wondering what just happened to the economy of the United States and with a foggy uncertainty about what this all of this talk about $700 billion and Credit Default Swaps means to us and the people closest to us, then take stroll over to The Daily Kos and read the article entitled “Three Times Is Enemy Action” and it will be explained to you. It begins this way:

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is Enemy Action.”
— Auric Goldfinger

James Bond’s wealthy nemesis may have had an obsession with gold, but he judged, quite correctly, that if people keep putting your plans awry, that was likely their intent.

This is a long and in depth article so I will not attempt to rehash it here, but it is a history lesson, and I’m sure it’s one that hasn’t been taught in many schools in recent years. It concludes this way:

This week, the Bush administration announced the beginnings of a plan to salvage what remains of the financial markets. At first glance, it appears that the plan will consist mainly of creating a kind of “garbage pit,” a fund or group of funds — cousins of the Resolution Trust that was created during the S&L crisis — into which those people who have dabbled in bad debts can toss their problems. Only this time the cost to the taxpayers is at least $700 billion… and a big bite out of representative democracy.

The expansion of unregulated Savings and Loans in the 1980s brought on the collapse of that industry, a crippling of the economy, and left taxpayers holding the bag. Maybe that was only happenstance. Those pushing for the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act may not have known what they were doing.

The deregulation of the California electricity market, along with the protections provided to Enron through Phil Gramm’s lobbyist-written legislation brought blackouts, fiscal and political chaos, and left taxpayers holding the bag. But the people who engineered that event — people like Gramm and Greenspan — had already seen what happened with the S&Ls. They should have known better. Still, perhaps that was only coincidence.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis that has not only come so close to utterly destroying the markets, but has ruined the value of many people’s homes and left millions with mortgages they can’t pay, was also the outcome of the deregulation created by these men. The very predictable outcome. When taxpayers are left holding the bag for $1 trillion this time around, it’s hard to believe it’s any sort of accident.

This is enemy action. This is a bullet deliberately fired into the economy by men willing to exercise their ideology regardless of the cost to taxpayers. Men who have every expectation that they can plunder the system again and again, while the public picks up the tab. John McCain may not have had his finger directly on the trigger, but he was there. He assisted. These were his personal friends and philosophical comrades. He may not be the high priest, but he has been a loyal acolyte in the cult of deregulation.

It may come as a surprise to the champions of deregulation, but nobody likes regulation. The restrictions that were placed on banks, S&Ls, and other institutions in the 1930s weren’t put there because someone thought it would be fun. They were put in place because they addressed problems that had just been clearly and painfully revealed. They were put in place because they were necessary.

It’s bad enough if John McCain didn’t know that. It’s far worse if he did.

Please take the time to go over to dKos and read the whole thing though, because it makes clear what has happened to bring us to this point, and it also makes clear that one of the Presidential candidates may have played and enormously large role in the collapse of Wall Street, and that candidate is the one who looks like the guys pictured on the money.