http://www.alternet.org/workplace/112078/a_message_for_america%27s_ruling_class%3A_we_told_you_so/ By David Sirota, AlterNet. Posted December 13, 2008.
Our bipartisan political Establishment and sycophantic Punditburo have been wrong on the economy over and over again.
Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it's a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America's ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it's not said here you can bet it won't be said anywhere else in the media, and it needs to be said somewhere on behalf of the millions of citizens who were right.
We told you so.
In the slow-motion train wreck that became the current economic meltdown, our bipartisan political Establishment and the sycophantic punditburo have been wrong over and over and over again. They told us that eviscerating consumer protections would unleash the market's benevolent power and boost the economy. They told us that a trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout would solve a credit crisis. They told us that bailout would be subjected to intense oversight and scrutiny.
Wrong, wrong and wrong -- and when critics predicted just that, sneering commentators and congressional leaders berated us as know-nothing Luddites, conspiracy theorists, or both.
But with the release of three new reports, there's no debate anymore about who was correct and who wasn't. The studies prove that the critics were right and the ideologues of Washington were wrong.
When in 2005 Congress overwhelmingly passed a credit card industry-written bill gutting bankruptcy laws, progressives were right to try to stop it -- and not just because it was an immoral move to legalize usury. We were right because as the New York Federal Reserve Bank reports, the bill played an integral role in the recent foreclosure surge that crushed the economy.
In the past, bankruptcy laws made sure debtors first and foremost continued paying their mortgages so that they could stay in their home. But the 2005 legislation effectively compels debtors to first pay off their credit cards, meaning many then have no money left to pay their mortgage. The Fed's report estimates that the bankruptcy bill is causing 32,000 more foreclosures per quarter than the economy would have already generated.
FULL story at link.
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