As long as there’s no fundamental change in the structure of Wall Street — as long as the big banks stay as big and are allowed to grow bigger, and have every incentive to invent new financial gimmicks with which to bet other peoples’ money — they will remain too big to fail, and too politically powerful to control. Congress has labored mightily to produce a mountain of legislation that can be called financial reform, but it has produced a molehill relative to the wreckage Wall Street wreaked upon the nation.
It is a good step towards fixing some of the worst practices, most notably by creating the consumer protection bureau. However, this bill does not fundamentally change the way Wall Street does business. These guys got off incredibly easy for the enormous damage they did the country.
— Dean Baker, economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research,
commenting on today’s Senate passage of the financial regulation bill.
We’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused… Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.
For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. That is, somehow it has become conventional wisdom that now is the time to slash spending, despite the fact that the world’s major economies remain deeply depressed. This conventional wisdom isn’t based on either evidence or careful analysis.