On the wall in my office is a going-away present from when I left Newsweek -- seven cover stories I wrote in the late 1980s and early nineties. Someone walked into my office yesterday and noticed something I hadn't, the eerie familiarity of two covers from 1990:
Bonfire of the S&Ls: How much will You Pay? Are the Banks Next? (May 20, 1990)The Real Estate Bust (December 1, 1990)
There are many differences but some strange similarities. The connections between the real estate and financial markets created a destructive downward spiral for both. And back then, the two big lessons were:
1) Don't ever invest as if things are always going to go up
2) When regulation grows too lax, greed overruns the system
This isn't a crisis of greed. It's a crisis of memory.
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I agree. We keep repeating mistakes.
You're absolutely right. There is one lesson we need to learn: if a financial crisis is big enough, the government will step in. So we need regulation to prevent this from happening again.
This has been pretty scary. I'm not sure I can forget this.
I do think that you should address the issue of whether religious ideology or ideas had any effect on what's happening. I don't know the answer, but I think that it's an interesting question.
Going forward, I think that liberals are right about regulation, while conservatives, like Rod, are right to ask if we're saving enough or planning enough for the future.
How does religion help now?
If I knew the answers, I'd tell everyone.
"2) When regulation grows too lax, greed overruns the system"
Why isn't the press talking about Sarah Palin's nonsensical statements this week about what's wrong with the financial world, and how she's going to do some "shakin' up and some fixin"? She berated big business for its greed, and then in her next sentence exclaimed that the government "fixes" the problem by stepping aside and getting out of the regulation business.
Please God, save us from these people!
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