According to the IMF, the world’s next financial meltdown can happen again soon. They contend that the safeguards against this happening again were never put in place by governing institutions.
This isn’t my area of expertise but I do remember when Glass-Stegall was repealed in 1999, that was put in place after the Great Depression of 1929, resulted in our crash of 2008…less than 10 years later.
Many people lost their retirement savings in 2008 because investment ratings were misrepresented by financial institutions and yet…who paid the price? Now when the financial market is global, who presides over everyone that all must adhere to making the playing field equal, fair and as economically safe as possible?
The world economy is at risk of another financial meltdown, following the failure of governments and regulators to push through all the reforms needed to protect the system from reckless behaviour, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
Remember the choices…and who received large donations from Goldman Sachs?
Goldman was a key participant in that “shadow banking system” that precipitated the housing market collapse and the consequent financial debacle that slammed America’s middle class. (A system that was unleashed in part due to deregulation supported by the Clinton administration in the 1990s.) This investment house might even be considered one of the robber barons of Wall Street. In its 2011 report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a congressionally created panel set up to investigate the economic meltdown, approvingly cited a financial expert who concluded that Goldman practices had “multiplied the effects of the collapse in [the] subprime” mortgage market that set off the wider financial implosion that nearly threw the nation into a depression.
Hillary Clinton’s shift from declaimer of Big Finance shenanigans to collaborator with Goldman—the firm has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation—prompts an obvious question: Can the former secretary of state cultivate populist cred while hobnobbing with Goldman and pocketing money from it and other Wall Street firms? Last year, she gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences. (Her customary fee is $200,000 a speech.)
Great thread. This is an issue that transcends politics because both sides are as guilty as each other. There is zero chance that Trumps administration will address this and if there is another financial meltdown the same old “too big to fail” mantra will be trotted out.
If we as individual citizens did what the likes of Goldman Sachs were doing we would be sat in jail.
You aren’t going to find any disagreement from me that the Democrats failed to address the issue.
Eric Holder’s biggest mistake was the “too big to fail”
I mean I think that the big banks should be broken up… let’s start with Wells Fargo and throw a whole bunch of their executives in jail for racketeering.
…and someone said something stupid like…“money can’t buy happiness”. Now tell that to the financial institutions of the world and politicians who are laughing at us little people.
I’m thankful that Camerons Govt actually ring-fenced the banks off a bit to limit the damage when it happens again.
He got a lot of pushback on that, with bankers insisting he was being far too draconic. Didn’t go nearly far enough for my liking, as it sure as hell won’t stop a collapse from happening.
I’m no expert either but though they touched on corporate borrowing, they failed to mention that those loans are being bundled and sold just like the high risk mortgages that precipitated the 2008 crash. I wonder what percentage of those corporate loans could be considered high risk that might default at the drop of a hat.
There is a scene in the novel “Infinite Jest” where during a Tennis competition there is a participant who plays with a gun held up next to his head, just daring people to beat him… It is unnerving and unsettling. He wins.
What governing financial institution has the power to make all countries adhere to the same, exact rules and what power do they have to enforce their rules? All must play on a level playing field or, the corrupt financial institution wins? That appears to be the number one problem IM naive O.
The banks are huge multi national organizations with no allegiance to anything beyond “maximize shareholder value”
In a perfect world there would be multinational agreements that would curb the worst excesses of the banks and the countries that cater to secretly accumulating and hiding wealth for the ultra rich.
But that is a perfect world.
For now I would be fine with the reinstatemnt of Glass-Stegall and pressing charges in bank execs who have profited off of defrauding customers.
I think the suggestion from zantax is that banks from all the other power countries would crush USA banking if we followed what Canada did.
And the suggestion from Jezcoe is that the zantax reply implies that we’re therefore playing the game with a gun of suicide held to our head.
I would say that ALL the power countries are holding guns to their heads.
And it’s not guns they’re holding to their heads. It’s suicide belts. And we spectators are gonna get blasted when one of them goes off and triggers all the rest.
We’ve been voting for them for the past 100 year. Not “a lot of people”. All of us have.
To be blunt, I thought the ultimate financial Armageddon was going to hit way back in the late 80s. And I pitied whichever president would win the election to succeed Reagan because history would lay it all on him.
Here we are, 40 years later and the festering wound has only grown deeper. It’s going to be a bloody mess when it finally bursts open.
