"Is human nature subject to the conditions that prevailed during our evolutionary history? I believe (the conditions) have changed; we can no longer be scrutinised and held accountable by a small (village or agricultural) community. We need governments to fill a regulatory role." *
Matt Ridley, an avowed libertarian and justifier of the "keep government off my back " (at least he didn’t ask to get off off his back!) , ran the disastrous Northern Rock Bank, unsupervised by the financial authorities. Guess what? This greedy hypocrite, as soon as his free-wheeling, lousily run bank got into financial difficulties, off he ran to be bailed out by the detested government that he had been railing against for years.
Geoprge Monbiot in the Guardian Weekly, November11th
Contrary to the opinions of some people, Northern Rock and other British banking institutions are very lightly supervised. Anybody who even glanced at the news knew at the beginning of the year that the sub-prime fiasco was about to explode (my son, involved in this world, told me last January!), but such is the power of money and the stridency of the free-marketeers that the Government still did little or nothing to protect the country against this stupidity.
The fault lies not with too much oversight– it lies in too little !
The function of government is to mint the money. What people choose to do with it after that, is their business. That is the principal, but it is an imperfect world.
Anyone with eyes could see housing was out of control, from 1980 on. The subprime mess is just the tip of an iceberg. Still what can goverments do, when crooks are gaming the system? Not much, nor should they. This how societys learn. See how credit has gotten tougher, the government is not doing that, people are, on their own.
It will be our pleasure, now, to see the government doing what it does best: putting a lot of these folks in jail!! And the free market will do what it does best, putting the rest of the crooks on the street, in debt, with ruined credit, hopefully for the rest of their lives. This is truly a moral and just outcome for them.
Being an American, I have no need of the government “regulating” my puchases. It is immoral. The government should instead prosecute the dishonest, it is good at that on occasion.
Can’t disagree with that!