Daddy, Did Wall Street Win the War?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/4877/daddy_did_wall_street_win_the_war/

Friday September 11 12:01 pm

"All you have to do to feel the outrage over the continuing flow of bonuses on Wall Street is to take a walk down Main Street." ~ Reuters, September 8, 2009.

A year ago, Wall Street was on life support. Its entire fantasy finance casino had crashed, wiping out years of record profits in a matter of days. The entire phony edifice of structured finance based on junk debt came tumbling down.


Traders work on the floor of the NYSE in November 2008, shortly after stocks had fallen below 8,000. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)


The financial sector imploded as banks and investment houses watched their triple-AAA-rated securities turn toxic. Lending ceased as banks realized that all of their trading partners also were loaded with junk. No way would they loan money to anyone.

In a modern society, a credit freeze means instant death to the real economy, since virtually every enterprise, big and small, runs on credit. When the financial sector froze, it pushed the real economy off a cliff.

We were on the verge of the Great Depression II. We all knew what screwed up. The fantasy finance fiasco created and run by the largest banks in the world, totally failed us. And the dogma of deregulated markets screwed up even more.

We relearned the painful lessons of the Great Depression: deregulated finance leads to a speculative casino, then to bubbles, and then to busts, taking us all down. That's what deregulated finance does.

The credit system needed to be resuscitated in a hurry or the economy would crash even further and faster. For better or for worse, we needed the banks to maintain that credit system, so the banks had to be rescued in the process.

FULL story at link.