Learn From History

I was reading one of Jack Krugman's colunms today. He is an economics professor, I think at Columbia and writes an op-ed column for the New York Times.  He was talking about how our legislators don't seem to learn from history, even when it is recent history. During the last vote on regulating banking with some small restrictions, every single Republican voted no, and something like 27 Democrats voted no.

You want to wonder where these people have been for the last year. Have they been visiting another planet? Maybe they have their heads in the sand.

After the first "great depression" in the 30s, the government imposed regulations on lending. It kept things going pretty well until the Reagan era, when free enterprise became the new idol and could do no wrong.Regulations were less and we got the savings and loan fiasco that the American people had to pay to fix. Then came the sub-prime loans and the housing bubble and we're still reeling from that. It seems that there are plenty of things to blame for the depression besides lack of regulation and greed. Let's blame the poor people who somehow hoodwinked the mortgage companies into loaning them money they couldn't pay back. It has to be the victim's fault, right? Our upstanding bankers with thier huge bonuses couldn't do anything wrong.!

Of course, the Republicans vote no on everything. Let's not give Obama any slack at all.The sooner the Democrats are gone and the Republicans are back in power, the sooner we can get back to business as usual, letting the free market take care of everything, like health care where they're doing so well. Let the market take care of policing and the prisons, and our infra-structure. Surely, all the altruistic business men will have out country whipped back into shape.  I know that's not quite fair, as there are some businesses and businessmen who do care and give back to the country. Too bad there aren't more of them.