Critics have long said that the so-called government regulators of banking, agriculture, and the food industry are more friends of the industry they regulate, than they are of the taxpayers and consumers who pay their salaries. Just how cozy this relationship is, at least in the banking regulation end, is frightening.
According to the New York Times, a bank regulator allegedly allowed a bank to backdate information, resulting in the loss of nearly nine BILLION dollars, when the government finally assumed control.
The Office of Thrift Supervision has reassigned a senior official after it was disclosed he apparently allowed mortgage lender IndyMac to backdate records of capital infusions last spring before it failed in July, costing the FDIC a tidy $8.9 billion. The lapse may mean Obama now has the ammo to force a merger of the OTS into another federal regulator. (New York Times, (12-22-08)
The Times went on further to say this is not an isolated incident.
Investigators reported that similar officially approved backdating appears to have occurred at other financial institutions, though they did not name them (Ibid)
Here we go. Parties unnamed in the banking industry have been manipulating documents, forging reports and getting away with bilking shareholders and taxpayers out of billions of dollars, all under the "watchful"- and complicit eyes of regulators, AKA enablers who allowed the foxes to run off with the chickens while they were supposed to be guarding the hen house.
They've been lax at guarding your money, now let's see what the enablers have been doing to weaken food safety regulations. A noted critic of federal food safety regulations, author Marion Nestle write a scathing critique of the US food regulatory industry. After years of experience with American regulatory politics, Nestles says
"I eventually came to the conclusion that the food companies""just like companies that sell cigarettes pharmaceuticals, or any other commodity""routinely place the needs of stockholders over consideration of public health. (Food Politics)
And that is precisely when we need regulations and untainted regulators. Corporations and businesses operate for their own benefit, not for the common good. In order to function as a business, an entity must define itself, set goals, and work to achieve those goals.
Those goals, namely profit, will, without a doubt conflict with the greater good of society, because the goals of an organization are self-serving. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. We just have to keep in mind that every organization or business is self-serving in a capitalistic society, a fact which, requires the existence regulatory bodies.
Many "captains of industry' in the past (and scores presently) believe that what is good for their companies is good for the nation.
More than half a century ago, then-General Motors President Charles Wilson was misquoted as having said, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." That quote came to epitomize the auto giant's arrogance. (Frank O'Donnell, "What's Good for GM?"-, Tompaine.com, 4-6-06)
The above denotes a view, from an industry perspective, that the rest of the world revolves around the industry. What Wilson actually said was this: "What is good for America is good for General Motors, and vice versa." (Ibid)
It is that vice versa, that "the other way around," that "conversely" that industry wants us to forget. There is a symbiotic (some would say parasitic) relationship between business and society. Business, in our modern society, frees us from the daily grind of hunting for food, gathering water, growing food, and sustaining ourselves in a subsistence environment. Unfortunately, this relationship does not come free, without cost.
In exchange for the convenience of allowing others to grow, process and sell food, provide transportation devices, deliver healthcare and "provide for the public safety"-, we give up a majority of control over how, when and under what conditions these services are delivered. A regulatory environment exists to form a balance.
Understanding that these businesses and organizations are self-serving, we developed regulatory agencies to oversee their operation and make sure they operated in a safe environment and didn't kill us off by the gross. Regulatory agencies exist to make sure business, in its zeal to make a profit and to deliver dividends to stockholders, does not harm the public.
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