So I'm in Northeast Mississippi just for a day or two and I happen to check out the Daily Journal, and I see that unemployment in the land of my birth has dropped (the same song we're hearing all around the country) - probably because more people have just given up. Even the official rate (we know how accurate that is) in Alcorn County is now 11.3 percent, and it's worse in nearby Tippah and Benton Counties. This is recovery?
Just about a year ago we turned out in numbers all over the country to demand a bailout for Wall Street bankers and speculators, not 'Main Street' slobs like you and me... Or that's what you'd think from the response from DC. $4 trillion later, we are still losing jobs, losing homes, and the fat cats are still getting billions in bonuses - that's right, bonuses, just the bonuses.
But some of us called for more than just a bailout. We need to make sure we don't just piss on this fire and circle around to the same damn mess again. We need more than regulation, of course. After the legendary "Great Depression" (one of many - depression was cyclical before that, like El Nino), we already tried regulation, followed by deregulation, followed by economic catastrophe - surprise! What we need is "un-deregulation."
But that's not enough, either, as I've ranted before. Social Monetary Fund, etc. Part of it is Bernie Sanders's suggestions (and those of others) that if they're too big to fail, they're too big to exist. I think that has to be part of getting control of this situation. Re-regulating, or even takeovers, won't solve it alone - especially given that the public officials overseeing or managing these big boys will likely stem from the same putrid root as the deregulators and other bandits who got us into this mess in the first place.
Here's a good argument for doing both.
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