they have already looted it [Soc Sec].

Al Gore said we need a ‘lock box’, but the Supreme Court said, “No, let’s let Dubya play with all the money and do whatever he wants.”

At least the public told W to take a hike.

Maybe some day we can get back to more sound budgeting.

Failure to exercise fiduciary responsibility

Of course all their stockholders and partners wanted as much profit as possible, so how much could they really criticize their ‘leaders’ who did whatever was required to get them in position to take that big spin of the wheel?

I think, all in all, you simply have to admit that the separation of private equity firms from banking (or insurance or any firm operating for the public) is important and significant and that the degree of freedom firms have within those realms is going to be different. And, on top of that, the markets have to be safe for both kinds of investors with transparency and oversight from federal government regulators.

How to achieve that last item has always been tricky. Freedom for some investors and highly regulated for others doesn’t lead to an obvious middle-ground which both can play on.

What I don’t understand is why there are not any class action stockholder lawsuits against the boards and corp officers that allowed this to happen

Consider they got politicians to actually change the laws, one has to wonder what was it they did which really was illegal.

Rewrite the laws to make virtually everything legal and then what is there to prosecute. Something about negligence with regard to fiduciary responsibility perhaps?

There really is no difference between the regulators, the (laughingly-referred-to-as) regulated, and any other part of the government.

How much Regulating does the Fed actually do? I thought it was mostly up to the SEC, FDIC and perhaps one or two other regulators to do that sort of thing.

barring some sort of foreign policy fiasco like the hostage crisis.

don’t forget, bush got the hostage crisis for reagan he can get one for palin as well

It’s not so clear now how the Bush family might be involved. If you remember in 1980 GHWBush was going to be Veep and they had a vested interest in destroying Carter. Today we know JEB isn’t going to run for senate or prez, so how much would they invest in controlling political outcomes this time around?