Election Snippet: "Greed and Corruption"

In today's Election Snippet: The Number One thing I noticed about the Vice-Presidential debate.

Sarah Palin kept talking about the "corruption and greed" in Wall Street that led to the current financial crisis.

But she had not one thing single to say about what she would do to rein it in.

"Greed and corruption" was clearly a mantra. She knows that people are pissed at greedy, corrupt bankers and rich financial muckety-mucks, so she chimed in over and over to say Bad Things about them. But she's certainly not going to say, "The financial industry needs to be better regulated." That's counter to the Republican true belief in the power of the free market to fix all problems, to cure cancer and find lost puppies and bring peace and prosperity to all people across the galaxy. And it would remind people that eight years of Republican rule and deregulation and sucking the collective cock of the stinking rich was a huge part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

No, no, no. Better to just try to make people think you feel their pain and anger... while conveniently ignoring that your party is the one inflicting it, and utterly failing to offer any plans for what you're going to do about it.

Comments

[chancelikely]

"That's counter to the Republican true belief in the power of the free market to fix all problems, to cure cancer and find lost puppies and bring peace and prosperity to all people across the galaxy."

Not anymore. The Republicans in the Bush era completed their goal of becoming "The Other Party Of Big Government, Except Spent On Bloated, Wasteful Defense Projects Instead Of Bloated, Wasteful Social Programs." If there ever was an era when Republicans really believed in the free market, instead of paying it lip service when they remember that their constituents don't like paying taxes, it's long gone now.

[King Aardvark]

True, chancelikely, except that they still like to portray themselves as "small government" so that the libertarians and few remaining fiscal conservatives will vote for them. It's all an illusion...

[arensb]

eight years of Republican rule and deregulation and sucking the collective cock of the stinking rich was a huge part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

You say "sucking cock" like it's a bad thing! :-)

[Valhar2000]

You say "sucking cock" like it's a bad thing! :-)

Clearly, it wasn't a bad thing for the ones getting their cocks sucked. Not so for everybody else; metaphorical oral sex affects everyone, it seems.

[Mat Wilder]

Except we haven't had 8 years of de-regulation. We've had 8 years of increasing regulation. The whole problem was government interference. The government forced loan firms to offer loans to clients unable to manage them well - these are the so-called "sub-prime" loans we hear so much about.

The carrot to this stick was that the government created entities Freddie and Fannie would buy the loans. That is what got us into this great mess. People defaulted on their loans, costing tax-payers great loads of money, and now Congress is throwing more money at the problem, without doing anything to solve the underlying problem - government intervention.

At least that is what I gather from reading the blogs of several economics professors. This picture was painted for me by the following blogs:

Cafe Hayek
Marginal Revolution
The Distributed Republic
EconLog
The Fly Bottle

and this article:
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/10/08/lessons_from_the_bailout

This is why I don't vote (to quote Brian Griffin).