When will governments wake up to the lessons of history and realise that there is a fundamental conflict of interest in the banking or any other sector being allowed to self regulate their activities to maximise their profits?

Separation of control is good governance 101. to do otherwise is to put the fox in control of the the chicken house.

Self regulating power generators in Canada emitted 20 times the pollution that they said they did under de-regulation.

The Glass-Steagall law was the legislative response to regulate the financial sector to ensure it never happened again. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the repeal law that gave greedy bankers an open cheque. Both Obama and McCain say never again. Let's regulate. I hope they do - with regulations that hold fast.

Do you like conspiracy theory? I think the collapse might have been engineered.

If the Bible tells us that the final economy is a mark on either the right hand or forehead (Revelation 13:16-18/14:9-11...read also microchip) what has to go before the new system comes in?
Cash has to go.

Everything is going over to big brother survellience ...what better way to keep everyone under control than a microchip on the right hand etc with a satellite link to the grand control room.

Pastor Barry Smith of New Zealand in his books "Warning", "Second Warning" and "Final Notice" spoke a lot about the fact that the money will crash in a flash...the antichrists global money managers having engineered it.
Many other christians will agree with this theory no doubt.

Professor Dapice paints the grim picture that those of us in America are now facing and Quick response has quickly muttered the magic words, "Let's regulate". The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was put into place because it was believed that the de-regulation of the 1920s and early 1930s were a cause of our great depression. Now, seventy-five years later we are at a similar situation. A period of deregulation, high stock valuations, retiring boomers - and no one knows where we are headed.

At the present time we need more than the Glass-Steagall Act because Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and some other firms are big originators of asset-backed securities and standalone investment funds. The passage of legislation restoring Glass Steagall alone wouldn't affect their capacity to continue doing what they are presently engaged in. It is the commercial banks who were the primary beneficiaries of the repeal of Glass Steagall.

The author also mentioned the many mortgage foreclosures. Sadly, some Republicans in the state of Michigan are preparing to collect names of those who are kicked out of their homes so that they can be denied the right to vote in the upcoming election. At the polling places, voters names can be checked against their addresses; if they do not match, they can be denied the right to vote. As they say, "Only in America"!

Joe

Bill Clinton in 1998 relaxed the regulations regarding loans. That action resulted in the sub prime type loans. This occured under the Fannie Mae management of Franklin Raines who paid himself $90 Million over 6 years. One of those corrupt CEO and obviouly a Washington 'insider'.

Bush, and neither the Republican nor the Democrat controlled Congresses ever acted to reverse this even after the worst of the excessess of the sub prime mess became apparent.

McCain co-sponsered a Bill to regulate the activities of unscrupluous lenders ... it was defeated in the Democrat controlled Congress.

'Obama had received nearly $10 million in contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate sector through October, and he's second among presidential candidates of either party in money raised from commercial banks, trailing only Clinton. Goldman Sachs, which made $6 billion from devalued mortgage securities in the first nine months of 2007, is Obama's top contributor. When asked if Obama would hold these financial institutions accountable for losses incurred by homeowners and investors, his campaign refused to comment.'
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/fraser

Published on 24 January 2008.

Fannie Mae former CEO Franklin Raines is now Obama's Campaign Financial Advisor.

McCain's right, the US economy fundamentals are still pretty good ... it's Wall Street greed, speculation and manipulation that is the problem.

As you said 'It could only happen in America.' It has and it still is...apparently.

the amusing activities on wall street are not an aberration, they are characteristic of capitalism and oligarchy. it is not a 'bad apples' problem, but rather a case of bandits running a society for the ease of banditry.

you want a better result? get a better system.

Why, why, why do voters here and in other supposed democracies continue to vote for governments that present the status quo in the face of repeated evidence that these governments have been corrupted by big business and WILL NOT act responsibly if to do so would face opposition from these businesses.

When things go wrong, as with the current financial crises, or when governments fail to react decisively in the face of overwhelming evidence of that need, as in the case of climate change and, closer to home the Murray Darling crises, we blame them.

Yes governments are at fault but the ultimate blame rests squarely on our, the voter's shoulders. We seem incapable of making the switch. We risk far more by not doing so than if we were to bight the bullet and back an alternative force such as, in Australia, the Greens