Interesting piece here by Jim Jubak at MSN. He makes a pretty convincing argument that the government was aware of the issues that could cause a crisis and did nothing to stop them. Why? Money of course.
The next round of looting
What should worry you now — if you can spare a neuron or two from worrying about the economy, your job, your retirement savings, your mortgage and the meltdown of the global financial system — is that the looters aren’t in retreat. If anything, they’re getting more brazen. For example, in the early days of the AIG crisis, Goldman Sachs Group (GS, news, msgs) denied it had any “material” exposure to AIG’s troubles. It wasn’t until months after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, organized a bailout of AIG that taxpayers found out the biggest recipient of taxpayer money, pocketing $12.9 billion of the $170 billion bailout, was — ta-da! — Goldman Sachs.The next round of looting is likely to come in the name of reform. Already, Shelby has called for federal regulation of the insurance industry. For years, the industry itself has been arguing for this, seeking to replace all those pesky state agencies and their differing rules with one federal standard. That’s great if the federal standards are tougher than the toughest state standards and the federal regulators are tougher than the best state regulators.
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.