Guardian UK: The end of voodoo economics

[marmar]

The end of voodoo economics
Wall Street ideologues have been gambling our money and screwing us all. Now is a chance to correct their excesses

Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Friday September 26 2008 20:00 BST



As the all-too-often selectively quoted Adam Smith actually said: "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."

No one can say that current events are a one-off. The get-government-out-of-business brigade, the masters of the universe, have in their three decades of unbridled power produced the savings and loan bail-out, the Mexican bond bail-out, the Asian currency crisis, the Enron and other related scandals, the tech bubble, the Long-Term Capital Management collapse and rescue, a wage freeze for working Americans and now this.

And the irony is that these vile people who are now graciously agreeing to pocket a trillion dollars of taxpayers' cash have been arguing for three decades that government has no business in business, least of all in pension provision. In their famous phrase, it would pose a "moral hazard" for ordinary Americans to think that their government would look after them if in old age their income or their health failed them.

Those who have engineered these serial disasters, which have inflicted more damage on the US and world economy than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, have not been pursued into the hills of Bora Bora. Governments have reduced their taxes as they reward themselves with more and more salary, bonuses and stock options. If the shares of the company they manage take a dive, they backdate their options. If the company fails, they take a golden parachute. And when all else fails, they come to the taxpayers, top hat in hand.

There is one small consolation. What if these guys had achieved their desire, shared with John McCain and George Bush, to privatise the social security system? Just think of the social and economic disaster they could have wrought given all those trillions of dollars to play with. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/26/us.economy.wall.street

[Waiting For Everyman]

1. Social security could still be lost that way - if McC wins.

He would still do it. He has learned nothing, regrets nothing, is unrepentent and unreformed. Neither is Gramm. We had best not feel too safe about Social Security staying out of the stock market just yet.

At least it's good to see this article though, instead of more as we have had for so long, proclaiming how great deregulation is.