George Will - Maybe He Needs Regulation?

fr: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/30/AR2008093002320.html

Georgie Boy,

Reading this column "was easy, but not necessarily" fruitful. At times, it was just nausea inducing.

Okay Georgie Boy, let us "talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis". Firstly, and I say this grudgingly, you are actually correct on at least one count - the public is not blameless.

The empty group-think demonstrated by consumers these past two decades has contributed to a demonizing of the notions of thrift and savings. By buying into a myth hitherto the purview of the truly wealthy, conspicuous consumption, the middle class not only overextended itself - but limited its chances of consolidating and paying down household debt to shield itself in the eventuality of an economic downturn. Ergo, today's middle class finds itself vulnerable to the tightening of credit in the marketplace and, in a very real sense, in peril of fading away. That being said, it does not preclude the fact that today's middle class is deserving of government protection. This protection need not be founded on socialist principles, but rather upon a strong regulatory framework that will protect it from creditors as it begins its long term reorientation towards a new ethos of prudent consumption. Yes, Georgie, a 'liberal' framework is needed.

Apparently Georgie you cling to the notion that "regulation" is akin to socialism. Pity, one would think your prominent spectacles would allow you to see farther into the future. If a bailout is to come, let it come with regulatory safeguards. Otherwise, today's problems will persist. If no constraints are placed upon predatory creditors and Wall Street's amoral speculators the country will simply be revisited by another debacle in the years to come. Unfettered profit-seeking must be bound by rules designed not just to protect the individual, but to defend the viability of the national economy as well. Indeed, there is probably no greater threat today to US homeland security than the danger of an abject economic collapse borne of lax governance in the face of predatory market speculation. Anyone who argues, as you do, that accepting regulatory reform in the final package is akin to selling one's soul to partisan Democrats intent on desecrating the principles of the founding fathers is simply wrong. Apparently, you do not understand the organic nature of your own country. Periodic increases in the size of government are sometimes required to see it through; a la Roosevelt's NRA. In time, the pendulum swings back; a la G.W. Bush's tax cuts.

Georgie Boy, America's motto should be: Government only if necessary, but not necessarily Big Government.

As you said Georgie, the public still needs "protection against obliteration of the financial system". But, even more importantly, it needs this protection to come with a government guarantee that the financial system will have imposed upon it a little "protection" from itself - no matter what bill is finally passed.

FIN



p.s. Georgie, re: your intriguing 'cultural roots' paradigm introduced at the beginning of column, it had potential. But true to form you choose to use it as 'device' rather than tool. Yet again, you meandered, dragging us up and down, and all around pundit-dung valley without ever coming to your point. What was your point about the role of culture? Too bad... I must have missed it amid your sniping at Democrats. Again, pity, would have loved to see you flesh it out.