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10 years after Lehman Shock: Safer financial system yet much hasn't changed

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A major contributor to the tea-party/populist movement, which took off in the years following the meltdown...and by extension today's divided world. A near trillion dollars of taxpayer money thrown at the banks so their execs. could continue take home their million dollar bonuses and avoid jail for instigating the greatest fraud in human history.

It's easy for the authorities to prevent another one: hike the banks' minimum capital reserve ratios way, way higher to around 50% and/or nationalize the mainstream banking system, like China has done, or allow a govt-directed bank oligopoly, which Canada did ages ago.

Banks should serve public goals and should NOT exist primarily to make a small number of super wealthy people super-duper wealthy.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

That was a crazy time. When Lehman went bankrupt, my buddy in finance told me that this was bad, really, really, really bad. I wasn't in finance, but I knew he knew his stuff. So it was weird, because if I recall correctly, it took a few weeks or months before the implications of the Lehman crash really became apparent to the whole world, and I was watching his comment about how bad it was, play out in real time.

It's amazing to think back about that time, and how much the world has changed, yet remained the same. For example, most of the regulations put on the banks after that crash, to ensure it couldn't happen again, have now been removed. So when does it happen again? The economy sure seems to be rolling along nicely just like the start of 2008 right now...

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For example, most of the regulations put on the banks after that crash, to ensure it couldn't happen again, have now been removed. So when does it happen again? The economy sure seems to be rolling along nicely just like the start of 2008 right now...

Yeah, I just read an article about the booming housing market in North Las Vegas, epicenter of the boom/bust that happened 10 years ago.

Like military spending, regulating this industry is another area where bipartisanship is alive and well. Last May,

"The House voted to pass the biggest rollback of financial regulations since the global financial crisis. The margin was 258-159, with 33 Democrats supporting the legislation."

None of them on the take, obviously. Barney Frank, before riding a golden parachute into a bank board position, actually wrote this:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/bank-reform-barney-frank-wall-street-213412

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@jcapan

"this industry is another area where bipartisanship is alive and well....The margin was 258-159, with 33 Democrats supporting the legislation.

"Bipartisanship"? Those numbers show it's an overwhelmingly a Republican thing, with the vast majority of Dems opposed.

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Jeff, not sure where you're from but if 33 members of your caucus jump ship to vote with the opposition, in US politics that is bipartisanship. I think 17 Senate Dems did the same. For an example of how commonly the term is thrown about when the numbers are that unbalanced, see here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-house-banks/congress-votes-to-ease-post-crisis-bank-rules-in-victory-for-trump-idUSKCN1IN316

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