I Bet They're All Wearing Gold Plated Diapers

I'm going to kick off the trend of responding to posts in new posts as opposed to the comments because I think it easier to keep track of what's been said. It's annoying to have to click into another window to see the state of the conversation.

I think there's little doubt that AIG's repeated corporate bigwig getaways are at the very least tacky given that they are the single biggest welfare recipients in the country. To met, it's irrelevant whether the money to pay for the retreats comes directly from the taxpayers or whether it comes from other benefactors. If they can dig up the extra money somehow to pay for these retreats, they should be digging up that money to do other things . . . like stay in business.

That said, the government has obviously been put in a no win situation in bailing out AIG and other companies. I think that there is absolutely no doubt that if we were in the environment where the national government only had the powers and/or the willingness to use its powers that it had in the 1920s that we'd be in a new Great Depression right now. Just imagine all these banks that have failed failing without FDIC protection, and imagine all these huge companies going under and resulting in massive additions to the rolls of the unemployed (which if you could those who have given up looking for work as they used to back in the old days of the 1970s and earlier is really more like 11% or 12% rather than the reported 6%) and other complications. It would be pretty bad. So, I think the government really has had no choice but to bail out these incompetent morons. It seems like they really need some more "aggressive" oversight, however. In the same way that the government excercises power over all kinds of things it has no direct right to control by conditioning highway funds and other such funds on the acceptance of certain rules, the government needs to be imposing rules that condition the use of the money it hands out on achieving certain goals. It's kind of shameful, for instance, that we bail out these banks so that they'll lend money and then instead they just pocket the money, which is more or less what they've done because they're still afraid of what might happen next and want to have money tucked away. That's great, but it's a neverending cycle that the bailout was designed to break.

Anyway, I think we've seen the ugly side of what capitalism can bring when there is insufficient regulation. Obviously we can't have too much regulation or we'll stifle the ability of companies to make money, which is what ultimately makes the economy roll for everyone, but I'm hopeful that the new administration in particular will take a less ideological approach to regulation than Bush did (essentially he felt that all regulation was inherently bad) and, with a reasoned approach, bring some sanity back to the way the government approaches regulation of the economy.