Views » December 12, 2008 » Web Only

We Told You So

By David Sirota

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.

We told you so.

When almost every media voice in America was sounding the alarm of financial panic and demanding a Wall Street bailout plan; when bailout opponents were roundly ridiculed as “irresponsible” by politician and pundit alike—those opponents were nonetheless right to say then what a study from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank says now: that the case hadn’t been made.

While reporters and the Bush administration frantically insisted that bank-to-business lending had ceased, inter-bank lending had stopped, and short-term “commercial paper” loans had dried up, the Minneapolis researchers tell us that “all three claims were false” and continue to be false; that “nobody has explained how the money system has frozen when the data says it has not”; and that “a trillion dollar intervention warrant(ed) a bit more serious analysis.”

We told you so.

When lawmakers said the bailout included strict oversight measures, skeptics were right to say that claim was patently untrue. According to a new analysis by federal officials at the Government Accountability Office, virtually nonexistent oversight of the bailout means “taxpayers may not be adequately protected” and that the bailout’s stated goal of fixing the economy “may not be achieved in an efficient and effective manner.”

Yes, we told you so.

And so now, even though these damning reports have garnered scant news coverage, perhaps there will be a change. As we—the pragmatic progressive majority—demand tough new financial regulations; job-creating investments in public infrastructure; labor law reforms; universal health care; revised international trade policies; a repeal of the odious bankruptcy bill and an end to Wall Street welfare—maybe, just maybe, our humiliated rulers will start listening.

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• Reader Comments

  It’s a nice piece, Mr Sirota, but why didn’t you link to the reports? We reality-based liberals like to check the primary sources:

  New York Federal Reserve Bank “Seismic Effects of the Bankruptcy Reform”

  Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank “Facts and Myths about the Financial Crisis of 2008”

  GAO TARP report

  Posted by cognitive dissident on Dec 12, 2008 at 10:20 PM

  As I wrote earlier, one did not have to be a genius to predict this present crisis.  You could have picked up any history book about the 1920s or the First Gilded Age and made a predicted about how our Second Gilded Age would end.

  These big free market phases of capitalism have always ended in a crash and consolidation—and the government always has to step in to pick up the pieces.  When the history is finally written of this whole era from the 1970s until now, it will be described as another Gilded Age, full of instability, economic decline for the majority, corrupt politics,. major economic panics and crashes all over the world.

  Posted by mcmchugh99 on Dec 16, 2008 at 9:58 AM

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