Reply #17: Hindsight Is 20/20

[KharmaTrain]

For 30 years we were told how we'd all be golden if the regulations on this industry or that one would be loosened. "Deregulate" the airlines and we'd get more flights at cheaper prices. Deregulate the airwaves and we'd have more programming choices and better quality. Deregulate the banking industry and money will flow to all. If it wasn't deregulate, then it was privitize...let the market lead the way to the promised land.

It didn't take long for that marketplace to show its true colors...green. The AT&T monoploy was broken up in the 70's only to return with a vengence in the late 90's, big corporate saw big profit on the market by expanding and expanding...always showing some kind of growth (even if it meant taking on huge debts) that projected greater earnings (the debt is never figured in) and rose the stock price. Bigger was better as the bubble lifted many boats. Soon we got industries that became too big to fail.

Be it automotive, airlines, broadcasting, steel...virtually every industry, we have a top heavy system with huge corporations determining the marketplace, not the other way around. Their failures have become ours. They eliminated the small and medium markets that could have been a fallback...and now if they fail, so goes economies on a national and worldwide scale.

It's not just AIG or Citicorp or Merill Lynch. They're high profile. Underneath the radar there are many failing businesses and industries tied to a few hands that leveraged and cooked the books to eliminate competition and enrich their stockholders.

FDR put in place a lot of regulations because he saw how the bigger is better failed in the 20's. Hopefully President Obama will follow the same model. After the economy stabilizes, rebuild it on the same grassroots level that lifted him to the Presidency.