Bill Herbert

Corporate Fraud + Government Intervention = Bailout Nation

I agree 100% with this commentary. To suggest that the banks had no role in their own demise is totally laughable. Any responsible banker or economist should have known long before the "meltdown" that extremely serious problems were occurring, like phony appraisals, bogus 'insurance' on mortgages, ludicrous lending and documentation standards, and an atmosphere of fraud and tolerance for bending/breaking rules on all levels.

People were making a lot of money and had no regard for the consequences. And I agree, it's people like Phil Gramm who are more to blame than anyone. I've always considered him to be a joke and a menace to sound financial principles and responsible conduct of our financial markets.

Two cases in point - Gramm led the charge to allow massive fraud and market-rigging behavior in the commodities markets - the result was Enron and significant corruption and volatility that exists to this day. The second example is as described above - the whole "deregulation" effort that destroyed Glass-Steagal and brought in a bunch of crooks and racketeers to run our biggest banks and brokerage houses.

The result of that is insanely huge compensation for criminals and a complete breakdown of responsible conduct, and now the U.S. taxpayers and foreign investors will be hit for several trillions to pay for it, so that a bunch of corrupt jokers like Phil's friends and campaign contributors can enjoy mansions and fleets of expensive luxury cars. What a travesty.