Axis of Logic reader comments on:

Inside Job is an Inside Job: A Misleading View of the Economic Crisis

Author Dave Stratman responds.

Remy Waller wrote:

"The banking collapse was a carefully planned strategic attack on the working people of this country and the world." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Mr. Stratman offers no evidence to back up his statement.

Author Dave Stratman replies to Remy Waller:

Remy - 
 
Thanks for rasiing your question. 
 
The evidence that this catastrophe was a strategic attack on working people comes down to these points:

1. The outcome of the banking practices (some of which I list above) and Federal Reserve policies that led to the disaster was entirely predictable (and of course was predicted by a number of economists, such as Nouriel Roubini). These policies and practices were the culmination of several decades of effort that made them possible--for example, the 1998 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act which was designed to prevent them.
   
   
2. The bankers and mortgage underwriters who perpetrated massive fraud in creating the disaster were rewarded for their efforts with salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of millions, much of it from the public purse, rather than being prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes, as were 1,100 Savings and Loan executives in 1991-92 at the close of the S&L debacle. The CEOs and public officials (e.g., Geithner, Bernanke, and Larry Summers [who split on his own] and elected officials responsible for this calamity are still in charge. Why? Besause they did the job they were supposed to do.
   
   
3. The bailouts--and hence its disastrous consequences, which have yet to be revealed to us--were not necessary, as I explain in the review. Had the government followed standard procedure for bank insolvencies, the shareholders and bondholders of the banks and insurers would have been responsible for their bad investment decisions--rather than us. Following FDIC procedure (as has happened with 247 bank failures since 2008) would have cost us nothing.