[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Leaving that aside for a moment, let’s focus on the fact that, while you’ve described the disease, you’ve failed to illuminate how more regulation is going to cure it. I’m curious as to this. What is your solution to this problem? And don’t just answer “more regulation”. What sorts of regulation? What type of teeth? We haven’t heard your plan to keep us from descending into the totalitarian abyss. Inquiring minds want to know.[/quote]
I’m not a wordsmith, so I may not be using the word corporatism by the book. Whatever word describes a system where the government bails out the corporations and let’s individuals fail is what we have.
My simple solution would be to limit all lender-borrower transactions to 4:1 leverage. You want a mortage? Put 20% down. A corporation wants to do a leveraged buyout? It has to put at least 20% down. And so on and so forth. No more of this ridiculous 30:1 and 40:1 leverage or 100+% leverage in some cases.
Forcing people, banks, corporations, hedge funds, and so on to have significant skin in the game would go a long way to preventing future bubbles.
Other things I’d change:
The Federal Reserve should be audited every quarter and must be forced to get approval from Congress prior to lending money or buying assets outright.
Fannie and Freddie should be eliminated. There’s no public interest in having government-guaranteed mortgages in this day and age of abundant housing. It just leads to unjustified house-price inflation.
I would eliminate the mortgage-interest deduction.
Glass-Steagal should be re-instated.
Banks should not be allowed to trade for clients and on their own account. If a bank currently has divisions that do each, one of those divisions needs to be spunoff.
TBTF banks should be broken up until they are not TBTF.
Bond buyers (as opposed to bond sellers) should pay for the bond rating from a rating agency.
All current outstanding Fed loans should be called immediately.
Bank mortgage portfolios must be immediately marked-to-market as opposed to marked-to-fantasy. If that results in the bank ‘becoming’ insolvent, then the bank should be immediately liquidated by the FDIC.
All tax rates should immediately revert to what they were in the Clinton era when America went through a period of tremendous prosperity.
The Citizens United decision should be overturned and McCain-Feingold re-instated.
Prop. 13 and related props in California should be repealed.
My basic philosophy is that we should have a robust social safety net for people that is financed by robust taxes on the super-rich and that we should allow banks to fail regardless of their size. Unfortunately, what we have instead is a robust safety net for banks financed by taxes on the middle class with individuals allowed to fail.
I don’t think the solutions are all that complicated. Getting politicians to implement them is another story.
Edit:Another change: Every high schooler should be taught how to do a rent-versus-buy calculation.
