regulation, responsibility and republicans

Al Capone advised not to invest in the stock market. “It’s a racket”, he maintained to all. He knew businessmen, he was one himself, and quite successful, until he had tax trouble. He along with Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, and others were the financial celebrities of the booming ’20s.

This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it. — Al Capone

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. — Al Capone

The roaring ’20s was a time of unregulated excess for those whom had access to wealth. Three Republican administrations allowed business interests to govern. Harding knew he was incompetent, and some of his cabinet was incredibly corrupt. Coolidge’s main occupation was sleeping. This culminated in Herbert Hoover, by far the most able of the three, and collapse. The greatest economic disaster, so far, in the history of this nation tumbled through his four years.

Franklin Roosevelt was then elected four times. The hatred that was given, to this man, by the Republicans and the moneyed interests was virtually boundless. He brought this country out of disaster and saved democracy. Those vengeful and vicious interests, even, at first attempted a putsch. It failed.

Mister Roosevelt was willing to experiment. He did not worship Mammon, under the avatar of “free market capitalism”. The man was not a socialist. He was a pragmatic politician, and acted as a shrewd statesman, and achieved success. This success was a boon to humanitarianism and the american nation. Franklin Roosevelt was a patriot. Some people believed, that, the party of Hoover and the bankers would never regain power, merely, because they should not; so as to avoid the inevitable disaster and failure that would return.

The stock market and the banks were greedy and corrupt in the 1920s. The rich and the Republicans were in high spirits. Their avarice and immoral practices brought ultimate ruin. At first Robert Taft emerged as the point man to overturn the entire New Deal, the reaganistas and the busheviks were successful in that endeavor, and by doing so, were the architects that laid the foundation, and executed the blueprints, for the current economic crisis.

The second Glass-Steagall Act*, the Banking Act of 1933 regulated the financial business. It included the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, but more importantly, it separated brokers from bankers, it created regulation and reform to prevent speculation. These measures reassured the country, and allowed for recovery from the policies of the Republicans, and the Wall Street clique. Now, this, as all elements of social and economic justice and financial regulation is, and has been, anathema to the moneyed interests, the economic royalists and the Republican party.

In the recent generation, the protections of Glass-Steagall have been cancelled and repealed. The last part of it was destroyed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. That Gramm, was the Republican senator from Texas, and presidential candidate, and professor of economics at Texas A&M, and McCain’s economic advisor, Phil Gramm. We now have what the Republicans wanted: the reforms of Roosevelt repealed, a return to the orgy of the ’20s. We also have a bill to pay for it. History repeated, because the nation did not remember what it meant to live under the success of the Republican party and their masters.

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. — September 2008 Republican Party Platform

Prosperity is just around the corner. — 1932 Herbert Hoover

Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. — Ambrose Bierce

The Congress shall have Power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes ... — Article I. Section 8. Constitution

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* Democratic Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, and Democratic Representative Henry B. Steagall of Alabama.