I found an article on Mother Jones by David Corn about Greenspan and his admission to the error of his ideology based in morality of deregulation:
In fact, it was always a matter of ideology for Greenspan, a libertarian champion. In 1963, writing in Rand’s “Objectivist” newsletter, he noted, “It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.” Regulation, he maintained, undermines this “superlatively moral system.” Self-governance by choice, he said, would be more effective than governance through government. Regulation, Greenspan maintained, was the enemy of freedom: “At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.”
Well, it turns out that at the bottom of the system that Greenspan oversaw for years, there was nothing but a pile of bad paper. And testifying to the House oversight committee, Greenspan, one of the more ideological Washington players of the past few decades, essentially said that Ayn Randism had let him—and the entire world—down. It was truly a God that failed. Mother Jones
As the cries of landslide, earthquake, revolution, turnover, and tsunami announce the coming of the Democrats, this may be just the surface description of what’s going on in this election. The above piece by D. Corn points to a mythic overhaul of a belief held sacred by most in our country for the last 40 years that God is not on the side of government, and for some government was on the side of Satan. So the Greenspans could argue with moral authority that government should keep its regulating (its control) off of business because the true God was the free market.
I feel that what we are looking at here is a misplaced belief in essential goodness. Somewhere along the line coorporations became indowed with the same rights as individuals. People are invested with essential goodness (another name for love), inaliable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness; but when these righs are transferred to corporrations, self-interest trumps love. Corporations are not capable of moral action; only people can be moral. Individuals can choose whether to be moral or not. We should not give corporations the luxury of that choice. Greenspan and his like let the bull loose in the china shop and it destroyed it.
Posted under current events
I remember clips from the famous wisdom comic of the 30s, Will Rogers, saying, “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” One could say now, “All I know is what I read in the bogs.” And each morning after meditation I settle into my warm living room chair, having turned up our Franklin gas stove to burn away the night chill and fixed a Colombian ground cup of coffee and peeled a banana, and open HuffingtonPost.com and Salon.com (in that order) to see what the world is thinking today. This morning it was Andrew Leonard, Salon.com reflecting on 2008, which as we all know is giving us all a dump truck full of food for thought. Read More…
