Presidential Press Secretary Dana Parino would not commit to that statement today.
Since my last entry, just over 72 hours ago, my Grandchildren bought AIG, Bank of America swallowed Merrill Lynch (absent First Franklin which Merrill got rid of a long time ago) and Lehman Brothers is gone. Barclay’s will be occupying Lehman’s building in N.Y. What a week.
Now we get to listen to all of the analysts tell us what went wrong. It’s not that complicated when you break it down to greed. Corporate financial execs were forced to show an increase in revenues or lower than anticipated losses to maintain market share values. To achieve this analysts and lawyers found or created loopholes providing short term gains while the bottom fell out because of bad lending practices. The short term returns ran out and the reality of a pure debt economy caught up. And we’re not done yet. By the end of next week WaMu should be owned by another institution, possibly JP Morgan.
But let’s not regulate, oh no. That’s “socialism”and infringes on the free market economy. It’s still “buyer beware” as others gamble with your investments. So the way to revive our economy, according to the GOP, is to increase tax breaks to the institutions responsible for this mess in the first place. “It will create jobs”, they say. Bullshit, I say. I call for industry regulation with the same tenacity McCain used to call for domestic drilling. Regulate here, regulate now! Self-regulation is an oxy-moron in finance and industry.
Regulation does not interfere with, but serves to compliment and protect the free market. Removing the intentional corruption, gouging, legal loopholes and fine print used by corporate think tanks to generate revenue at any cost to the consumer will reinstate the consumer confidence necessary to get the US economy moving again. Any less than a complete resurgence of American consumer confidence will be detrimental to all global markets.
So the resounding and obvious answer is: NO Dana the US economy is not stable even though you did a good job avoiding the question. Good little Press Secretary. Your input and statements were as valuable as those from my desk lamp.