Quote Originally Posted by VeeDubb65 View Post
Third, to go to the history books once again, after the great depression a wide variety of highly effective safeguards were put in place, making another great depression virtually impossible without a disaster of epic proportions, such as a pandemic (A real one, not swine flu), nuclear attack from another country, or some form of natural disaster so extreme that it wiped out our ability to produce food. Anything short of that, and another great depression is virtually impossible
Brother, I did go to the history books. Look up glass steagall on wiki, or the graham-leach-bliley act. Many of glass-steagall's provisions have been repealed over the years. The graham-leach-bliley act (phil graham) repealed a major portion of the glass-steagall which basically said that commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies must owned and operated SEPERATELY from one another. The repeal of this provision arguably paved the way for this economic situation. BTW, graham, leach, bliley, all Republicans and it was passed mostly by Republican vote in the house and senate. Unfrotunately, Bill Clinton didn't have the foresight to veto it.

Anyway, you had a lot of politicians and talking heads speaking out against the bailouts, but very few real economists. I listen to and read news from both sides of the political divide, and the vast majority of actual economists I heard were in favor of the bailouts (albeit reluctantly, as I think we all were)

And you're assumption that we'd be better off without the bailouts....we'll have to agree to disagree. I just don't see how letting every major financial institution in the US fail would have a minimal impact on our country. I think we would've ended up with a broken finger and a huge gaping hole in our head....i just really believe the bailout option is the lesser of the evils.

BTW, here's an interesting video from Byron Dorgan in 1999....this is part 2 of 2, check out 1 for more:

YouTube - Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999-Part 2