Arriving home from work I logged on and saw the stock market had dropped another 7%. I don't really want to live through a Great Depression. I'm sure it might build character ... but at my age I'm quite content being a little character-deficient. I had a notion about what might help restore some confidence - and almost immediately laughed at myself for such a pie-in-the-sky idea ... and then I read tonight somebody much more astute than I had already voiced the idea ...
Brad Delong wrote in The Wrong Financial Crisis :
In an ideal world, Richard Cheney would resign, George W. Bush would appoint Barack Obama vice president, George W. Bush would then resign, and President Barack Obama would recall the congress to set it to work. We don't live in an ideal world. In a less-ideal world, this would happen on November 5. I don't think we live in a less-ideal world. But we should do what we can.
Bush and Cheney gone. Obama at the helm. A new direction. Perhaps a brief honeymoon - long enough for the financial Einsteins to plot a course through this mess. Unfortunately, only in our dreams.
The Republican ideology of deregulation has brought this mess upon us. The GOP mantra of "Money, money, money" has brought this upon us. Bush and Cheney shouldn't just resign - they should literally fall on their swords. And many of the high-living wheelers and dealers on Wall Street should do likewise. At AIG, Joseph Cassano, the executive in charge of the company's troubled financial products division, received more than $280 million over the past eight years. He feels no responsibility.
We have public registries for sex-offenders ... we need one for ex-Masters of the Universe.