Financial industry execs testify before Congress

In keeping with today’s “calling out hypocrisy” theme…

Many financial industry executives are testifying before Congress’s “Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission” today. The gist of the message from the Wall Streeters: yes, we did a lot that was wrong, but we have learned our lessons and please don’t regulate us. Oh brother.

First of all, the errors committed by the financial industry are nearly identical to those that were committed in the last century’s Roaring Twenties. Those errors contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. Legislators of the time regulated the financial industry and did so well enough to prevent other major Richter scale financial earthquakes until 80 years later. However, those laws and regulations were whittled away at by the financial industry until much of the Great Depression safety measures were gone. Additionally, the financial industry has strongly resisted legislation that would curtail new businesses unimagined by the original regulators.

My question, in terms of evaluating the hypocrisy of the situation is this: how many of the financial industry executives whose power firmly encompassed an ability to cause financial ruin for many average consumers are homeless? There are many average Americans who are homeless or whose lifestyle took a major hit and who had very little power to control the situation. Yes, there are those who took on mortgages who should have known better. But what of the average Jane Doe whose company struggled in the low-demand, collapsed GDP environment who was laid off? That layoff making it tough to meet the mortgage payment. There are literally thousands of these people, if not millions. Meanwhile, we have financial industry executives who have experienced the effects of the causes they initiated as reduced millionaire-hood. Disgusting.

Re-regulation and new regulation remains the most important thing for our capitalist societies to takeaway from this greed-induced, money glut crisis.

Jason

PS – The Federal Reserve Chairperson, Ben Bernanke, repeatedly says that institution’s low interest rate policy was not the cause of the crisis. Shirking culpability in this situation is equally disgusting. Barf!