Obama on the Economy
If you haven't heard, very bad things have been happening on Wall Street lately (courtesy of the sub-prime mortage crisis).
To summarize: financial institutions on Wall Street have been acting more and more like banks in recent years. However, since they're not technically banks, they aren't regulated by the government the way that banks are. Thus, they're free to secure mortgages for high-risk home-owners. When the home-owners can't pay... the government has to foot the bill so that the huge financial giants don't go out of business which would then destroy the rest of the economy.
The obvious solution: regulate the financial institutions just like banks. If they want to get bailed out by the government, they should have to play by the government's rules (i.e., don't loan money willy-nilly to high-risk borrowers) just like banks have had to ever since the Great Depression.
Alas, Republicans are opposed to any new regulations on business, even though deregulation is directly responsible for the mortgage crisis that we're currently in.
Anyway, here's a speech Obama gave today on the matter.
It's a little long; if you can't listen to all of it there's a nice summary and choice quotes here: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=11326
To summarize: financial institutions on Wall Street have been acting more and more like banks in recent years. However, since they're not technically banks, they aren't regulated by the government the way that banks are. Thus, they're free to secure mortgages for high-risk home-owners. When the home-owners can't pay... the government has to foot the bill so that the huge financial giants don't go out of business which would then destroy the rest of the economy.
The obvious solution: regulate the financial institutions just like banks. If they want to get bailed out by the government, they should have to play by the government's rules (i.e., don't loan money willy-nilly to high-risk borrowers) just like banks have had to ever since the Great Depression.
Alas, Republicans are opposed to any new regulations on business, even though deregulation is directly responsible for the mortgage crisis that we're currently in.
Anyway, here's a speech Obama gave today on the matter.
Click to viewIt's a little long; if you can't listen to all of it there's a nice summary and choice quotes here: http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=11326