80 years ago today, on October 29th, 1929, Wall Street saw the
worst day in its history. The shock of "Black Tuesday" came to an end,
but the misery of the Republican Great Depression was just beginning.
As a result of the disaster that followed three successive Republican
administrations - and their cutting regulations and dropping taxes on
the most wealthy from over 70 percent to under 30 percent - the
Roosevelt administration through most of the 1930s re-regulated the
economy and raised taxes on the very rich back up to 91 percent. That
led to fifty years of growth and prosperity, which came to an end with
Ronald Reagan re-introducing the Harding/Cooledge/Hoover tax cuts and
supply-side economics. Hopefully the Obama Administration will soon
learn the lesson of the last Republican Great Depression and follow in
FDR's footsteps.
The nation's top credit rating agencies have managed to fend off a
crackdown from Washington by relying on a surprising ally - the First
Amendment. Even though their key role in the most recent economic
disaster, the three big bond raters--Standard & Poor's, Moody's and
Fitch--are ready to do it again. With assistance from two of the best
constitutional lawyers in the country, these corporations have
successfully argued that when they make a error -- like, awarding the
top triple-A grade to a multibillion-dollar bundle of bonds that later
default or to a company like Enron - yes, they did that -- that when
they do that, they cannot be sued or held accountable. Why? Because
ratings are opinions, the agencies claim, protected by the
constitutional right to free speech. Corporations should have first
amendment rights that the founders wrote only for people? What's next?
That corporations will claim the Fourth Amendment right to privacy to
hide their crimes? Oh, yeah, Dow Chemical has already asserted that,
and actually won. That they assert a Fourteenth Amendment right against
discrimination? Oh, yea, that's how hog farms and Wal-Marts get forced
on communities that don't want them. We really need to reboot the
Supreme Court, which has created out of thin air the idea that
corporations are "persons" entitled to the protections of the Bill of
Rights.
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