Re: [A-List] A Different Recession

["Margaret Wyles" <kaliyuga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> This time around, the nation will have to craft
> new
> versions of some of the reforms that Franklin Roosevelt created to
> steer
> the nation out of the Great Depression -- not because anything like a
> major depression looms.....

Good.  It's only a "Depression like" environment....

> The second way in which the current downturn echoes the Depression is
> the role played by our deregulated financial sector. Now, as then, the
> financial foundations of our leading banks and other lending
> institutions have turned out to be made of mush. Now, as then, this
> news
> has come as an appalling surprise not just to consumers but to many of
> the banks themselves. Now, as then, the banks created such complex and
> deliberately opaque financial vehicles -- all devised to make them a
> buck every time they swapped some paper -- that they long ago lost
> track
> of the paper's true value.
Those poor banks!  Taken in by unscrupulous borrowers....  Who could have 
predicted that the roll of the dice might eventually work against them.

M