A Tea Partier might, at this point in American history, be able to make a colorable claim to represent Main Street against Wall Street; but no old-line Republican like Bachus can, not since the Gilded Age.
That’s not the point. So you say his claim is wrong. Fine. But the point is that that remark, in the context of “main street versus Wall street” most likely meant what he later clarified it to mean - that the government should get off people’s backs and not micromanage them. (“Wall Street” in this context refers to big time bailout recipient, campaign contributing operators. “Main Street” means small business people who want to go about their own business.)
Of course, but the offense would need to be pretty blatant or more likely the result of a complaint from an outside source that would give the regulatory agency no choice but to respond seriously.
The point I was trying to make is that the relationship between industries and the government regulatory agency responsible for oversight is a symbiotic one rather than a confrontational role.
So in a sense Bachus accidentally mispoke the truth. The regulatory agencies *are *there to work with industry rather than to make sure that industry is doing everything it is supposed to do.
The intention in theory may be oversight, but the practice is cooperation. Spencer Bachus’ mistake was in accidentally letting this truth out into the air.
Was “micromanagement” on the table somehow, such that Mr. Bachus felt a need to refudiate the concept, or was that apropos of nothing in particular?
ISTM that under-regulation of banks has been a pretty convincing theme during our current economic unpleasantness. If I felt that Mr. Bachus were persuaded that this was a problem, and that it behooves him to avoid repeating the error, I’d be more likely to take his “clarification” at face value.
It would be pretty brazen of anyone post-1998, let alone the incoming Chair of the House Banking Committee, even to speak the word “micromanagement” in this context.
Oh, I see. I thought when you were talking about the quote, you were refering to what Bachus said not what the reporter said. Because, quite frankly, who cares what the reporter said? Bachus is the chairman of the House banking committee.
Interesting that you think the spin on what Bachus said is a more important issue than what Bachus himself actually said.
Neither I nor, you may be surprised to learn, the people who actually work in these fields, agree with you.
[QUOTE=Robot Arm]
If the banks put the needs of their customers ahead of their own, then we wouldn’t need to regulate them. But they don’t. Banks, and everyone else, are expected to act in their own self interest. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when our interests conflict and regulation is needed, it should be on behalf of us, the citizens, and not us, the banks.
[/QUOTE]
I again must point out that is is ignorant and fallacious to assume that regulation does not provide benefits to the parties being regulated. You’re making the assumption, an incprrect assumption, that regulation is a “government vs. the regulated party” relationship, that it’s the government protecting Party X, which is not the regulated party, from Party Y. That is just not so.
Properly done, regulation can enormously benefit regulated parties. I’m not going to go into pages and pages of economics and game theory and blah blah blah to bore you to death, but it’s so. Companies often find - to use a very common example - that workplace safety regulation is a hugely beneficial thing,. Indeed, I’ve heard more than a few factory owners say that they find safety authorities remarkably helpful.
I realize this isn’t a popular position in the current “evil big bizniss” environment where you’re expected to be either on the side of the knuckle-dragging Tea Party types or on the side of those charging the barricades, but nevertheless, Bachus was right. The government serves us, and “us” includes our financial institutions. For that matter, “us” includes criminals. It includes tax cheats and people who drive drunk and truckers who drive past the legal hours of work limits and people who commit zoning violations and double parkers. Sometimes the service the government provides must be regulation, sometimes even punishment, but we’re very unwise to forget that it exists to serve us. And when you do regulation right it can be good for everyone.
What “evil big bizniss” environment? Is there some mass movement out there “charging the barricades” as you claim?
But setting that aside, I agree that regulation does not have to be adversarial. Ideally, regulation should just be a quiet framework that businesses work within - the equivalent of the FCC regulating which airwave frequencies different broadcasters use.
However, we don’t live in an ideal world. In the real world, businesses often seek to influence the government to favor them. As you point out the government is supposed to serve everyone including business owners. But the government should not be serving business owners instead of everyone else.
Remember, when the government starts working hand in hand with business what you have is socialism. And I’m pretty sure Representative Bachus was not elected on a platform of enacting socialism.
Big Corporations: we can do anything we want!
Liberals: well, actually…
Big Corporations: YOU’RE ANTI-BUSINESS!
Right-wing Media: THEY’RE ANTI-BUSINESS! RAR RAR RAR RARRR!"
(idea edited to fit page)
Dude, look around the SDMB. Politics is just a little polarized right now.
Note that already I’m being implied as being a supporter of right wing media. Took about four posts.
We’ve been having demonstrations? Damn, why didn’t anyone tell me about this.
Technically, what I did was quote you. If you feel that reflects poorly upon you, don’t blame me.
Same advice I’d give to Congressman Bachus.
I was referring to Vinyl Turnip’s post, obviously.
All of which is fine. But Bachus didn’t say “government regulators should work with banks to ensure a healthy financial sector to meet the needs of our economy.”
Private businesses are not public servants. They don’t answer to the people. What’s best for them won’t always be best for the rest of us. Suppose a bank could increase its profits by raising the rates on its credit cards without telling the cardholders; whose side would Bachus be on?
I’ve no problem with government helping businesses when it’s appropriate. If someone robbed a bank, I’d expect the police and FBI to look for the robber and recover what money they could. I think the government should enforce agreed upon standards of fairness that protect all the people, and I don’t see that attitude reflected in Bachus’s quote.
Eventually. Sooner than you think, in fact. Sleep with the lights on.
Based on what I’ve read of him, the latter is exactly what he meant. “Government” [as synecdoche for government regulation of the banking industry] exists to serve the banks in exactly the same way as government highway patrols exist to serve the motorists. The man appears not to be in knee-jerk opposition to government regulations, but rather to see government’s job as protecting the public by prohibiting economically unsound practices, not intrusively regulating every detail of banking operations./
While one may not find this view amenable, one can see where a sane individual with the public good at heart might hold it.
As if anybody needed further outrage, Krugman’s article about the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission makes me grind my teeth. He nails the Republican party’s blindness to Wall Street and the banks.
The problem with the viewpoint that government cooperates with the industries it regulates is that it easily leads to the too-cozy relationship that was directly responsible for both the financial meltdown that led to the Great Recession and the BP Gulf oil spill. In fact, what directly led to the financial meltdown was a DELIBERATE refusal to regulate by government – the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed parts of the Glass-Steagal Act, most specifically it repealed the part that forbade bank to engage in high-risk investments … you know, things like DERIVATIVES! The banks had argued that they needed that power to maintain profitability. Their Republican friends (the bill passed along pretty much partisan lnes, Pubbies for, Dems against, though Clinton is the one who signed it into law … triangulating again, idiotically enough).
The problem with the financial services industry generally, as has been REPEATEDLY demonstrated, is that they will do ANYTHING, ANYTHING to make more money. Regulators HAVE to have an adversarial approach to banks and the financial industry in general, or we will be robbed again and again and again by them. Maybe in other industries where the rewards for bad behavior are not so huge and the penalties not so ridiculously mild (only criminal penalties work in the financial industry, fines would have to be astronomical to be effective, considering how much money there is to be made) a cozy relationship might work, but the FINANCIAL industry? Cooperation is insanely stupid!
Sure, Poly, but check out his quote from the original story:
This appears to place regulation in direct opposition to the service which the government owes to the banks, and if it acknowledges that regulation is a part of the service which the govern ment owes to the banks, that acknowledgement is extremely well-hidden.
It’s a trap!