The delicate balance between the profit motiv and public good has been a point of debate for decades. However, when it comes to regulation and regulatory agencies, as we have seen over the past decade, industry friendly regulation is almost as bad as no regulation.
With the proliferation of food-borne diseases, impaired air and water quality, not to mention tainted or unsafe imports, it is all too apparent that we can' t afford to emasculate or defund our regulatory agencies. Industry-friendly regulation is no regulation.
From imported lead toys, to e. coli tainted food products, to contaminated water and polluted air, we have found, to our cost, that the cost of not having regulation, the cost of not enforcing existing regulations, can be expensive, if not deadly.
Deregulation and lax enforcement has cost the nation billions of dollars and millions of lives. Our lives are foreshortened because of decreased pollution law enforcement. Our food quality has depreciated because of de-funded regulatory agencies and/or industry friendly regulators.
The housing finance industry has collapsed, due to a combination of greedy and/or financially illiterate consumers, self-serving mortgage bankers and "-get the sale at all costs' real estate professionals. The nation's current mortgage fiasco can be traced to document deception""by consumers and by mortgage institutions, along with a complicit regulatory environment.
"Liar loans" could not have existed without top to bottom complicity, from buyers to mortgage industry professionals, bankers and regulators. This was not a case of being asleep at the wheel. The whole credit collapse from real estate to auto manufacture is purpose driven train wreck.
If your purpose is to make money by any means necessary and if your government regulators are asleep at the wheel, there is no doubt that you and your fellow unregulated "drivers"- will drive the economy over a cliff. And, that is what has happened to us.
Self-serving industries have, without regulation or under the non-existent controls of lax regulation, pursued dangerous policies. Now, they and consumers are paying a heavy price. Some banks, and institutions, many more than a century old, have self-destructed themselves out of existence through liquidation or merger.
Others are on pins and needles, begging money from the government, which in turn begs loans from increasingly reluctant foreign sources. All told, the most egregious consequence of deregulation has been the mortgaging of the nation's future to hostile foreign financial interests.
We have fought two proxy wars with the Chinese (Korea and Vietnam), and now owe China untold trillions of dollars, through various loans. Our shoe, steel, textile, computer, and electronics industry have long since been outsourced to China and India. . The dollar, which was once lingua franca of the investment world is now in danger of becoming an also ran.
No nation has ever become or remained a world power without a manufacturing base. "Information"- or "Service"- Economy, we are no exception.
Where did our wealth go? How much is left? Who has it? What are they going to do with it? And how can we trust the government's reports on any of the above?
Welcome to Indenture USA.
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