<< No, these things do belong in the same department. Where the government gives instruction or command doesn't it take responsibility for the result?>>
If the government through its criminal code prohibits murder, is it then responsible for every murder that then occurs? If its criminal code prohibits rape, is it then responsible for all rapes?
Your idea is one of the craziest I have heard lately. Its logical flaw is that the government is the sole actor in our universe, or if not, that everyone just follows the law once it is proclaimed, so that all results of the law could only be the combined result of the government and any other actors all acting together to carry out the enacted laws. That is just ludicrous.
<< This isn't a case of being for apples and against oranges , it is more like being for apples and against apple trees.>>
For that theory to work, you'd have to convince me that government regulation of the financial industry will produce the kind of conduct that resulted, necessarily or not, in the bailout. However, the governmental regulation of the financial industry DID NOT cause the financial melt-down that led to the bail-out. The cause of the melt-down was the inherent greed and criminality of the financial system itself and Wall Street in particular, which could easily have been reined in by tighter government regulations strictly enforced.
<< Everybody likes jobs, everybody wants to use money once it is gathered together, so we gotta be against employers and financiers because we don't understand that connection? >>
No, the banking and financial systems did function in the past to gather money and lend it out to businesses, thereby helping to maintain relatively high levels of employment, but that was when both systems were tightly regulated to prevent the kind of criminal activity that led directly to the financial melt-down of 2008. Once the regulations were weakened, the criminal activity naturally increased accordingly and in very short time led to the melt-down.
<<I think that TARP was a natural follow on to the government involvement that helped cause the crash. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were quite popular before the crash because they lubricated the process of the poorer risk client getting a loan.>>
That is probably the grossest over-simplification of the melt-down that I have ever seen, but it's a very common falsification in conservative circles. There was nothing in the "lubricating" process that forced lenders to make loans to borrowers who had virtually no prospects of ever repaying the loan. If lenders were forced to loosen restrictions on lending, leading to an increase in bad loans, that in itself could never have caused the melt-down. Banks and lending institutions would have seen their losses gradually rise and perhaps at the extreme end of the spectrum, some of the smaller lenders would have gone under, which of course would have prompted a shit-storm of legislative efforts to reverse the "lubricating" efforts before more, and bigger, banks went under.
In fact, what happened was that unscrupulous brokers cobbled together mortgage loans to home-buyers who didn't have a hope in hell of ever repaying the loan, merely to earn a short-term commission, and the financial industry stepped in to immediately relieve the first lenders of the consequences of their loans by bundling the mortgages into new securities they had invented that inexplicably got triple-A ratings from all rating agencies and could then be re-sold to other buyers, including foreign banks. NONE of this activity was remotely mandated by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, all of it was criminal or would have been had there been closer governmental regulation of the financial and banking industry. The problem was exacerbated exponentially when some of the producers of the bonds realized they could bet against them by insuring themselves against the default that they knew would ultimately arise, and procured this insurance from insurers such as AIG by the creation of new instruments known as credit default swaps, which enabled AIG and other insurers to avoid the governmental restrictions placed upon what they could and could not insure. By creating credit default swaps, the insurance industry was able to insure without being caught by the regulations that were meant to stop the insurers from engaging in exactly this kind of risky activity. The criminality of the rating agencies in looking the other way, not only for the purchasers of the mortgage bonds but also for the insurers against their default has never been adequately investigated. Had the insurance industry been more tightly regulated, the fraudulent use of credit default swaps to avoid the regulations governing the issuance of policies would have been detected and prohibited before the whole house of cards got up off the ground.
The conservative myth that the melt-down was caused by government regulation is just insane bullshit that takes one government regulator - - Fanny and Freddy - -and their combined LOOSENING of restrictions as to who could qualify as a borrower - - and then misrepresents even the loosening of qualifying restrictions as somehow constituting MORE government "interference" with business; and then completely IGNORES all of the banking, financial and insurance industry criminality that then followed, so that it can present Fanny and Freddy and their supposed "interference" in the lending process as the sole cause of the crash.
The real cause of the crash was greed across the board - - the greed of the mortgage brokers who signed up unqualified borrowers for a quick up-front commission; the greed of the lenders, who found they could package what was effectively shit with a triple-A rating and sell it as bonds to unsuspecting banks up-stream; the greed of the rating agencies who rated the shit bonds triple-A so as not to offend their patrons in the financial industry who were bundling and selling the shit for the original lenders and selling it to their own clients as triple-A; the greed of financial houses for packaging and selling what they knew to be shit and in some cases for selling it to their own clients; the greed of the insurance industry for insuring against default on a commodity that they knew was going to default, for a healthy premium and probably some major under-the-table payoffs; the greed of the law firms and accounting firms who greased all the wheels when they should have known they were only building a house of cards but didn't give a shit as long as their exorbitant fees were paid on time.
The utter bullshit that the whole crash was caused by a loosening of restrictions (painted as "more government regulation") by Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac is the new conservative mantra, everyone singing it is lying and knows it is lying, but it's used to keep the hicks, rubes and yokels who vote for the GOP to keep quiet as the GOP carries on its crusade for less and less government "interference" in business. The Democrats, who as late as the time of Harry Truman, would have raised holy hell at the GOP and the financial industry, basically keep their heads down and their mouths shut when the anti-regulation bandwagon rolls into town, because they have been bought and paid for by the same criminals that the GOP has been serving since the Great Depression.
Which is why the Occupy Wall Street! protestors correctly identify Wall Street and not the Democrats or the GOP as the real source of the problem - - they are going after the organ grinder and not the monkey. Guys like you, plane, don't really know what's going on, so you drink the Kool-Aid and swallow the bullshit about regulations. The difference between you and Occupy! is like night and day. They just aren't buying the bullshit any more.
<< I see your complaint as likeing the heads and hating the tails , how diffrent is it really?>>
Oy, plane. Read what I just wrote. Wake up. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
