Two topics here which may be related: campaign financing and bank bail outs.
We need to find a way to track the campaign contributions made to major political officials. Can we find out who gave money to Obama and other past presidents and see if it made an impact on the decisions made during their term? This shit with the banks is still confusing me. As I see it, the logical thing to do to, as Geitner would say, a bank that is "too big to fail" is to save it first (we can argue about how this should be done in a different post) and then bust it afterward (trust-bust that is).
Historically, I don't know of anything ever done like this before - referring to the 'bank bail outs'.
I tell you, the more I learn about the financial sector, the more I think these people are going to ruin the whole show. Let's discuss it here, let's post on sciforums if the three of us can't think of anything, and then let's write to our Congressman once we're better informed. We might even want to include Josh on this one.
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I'd say tracking the campaign finance and seeing if it made an impact on their decisions is a massive project. You'd have to wade through 4-8 years of daily decisions - not an easy task. Not to mention correlating exactly what individuals correspond with what companies. How do you propose doing this?
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm reading The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman, and he talks about recessions & depressions in other countries recently, and what was done to try to get countries out. It's interesting, though hasn't really discussed the Great Depression yet. I also recall Jeffrey Sachs' book, The End of Poverty discussing how he was involved with some other economists in ending extreme inflation in Bolivia by injecting a ton of money into the country (I think through a one-time deposit from other countries that they didn't expect to get back). I'm not sure if that really correlates with the bailout, though, as that was money given to the central government, rather than directly to the banks.
I'm not sure if anything like this has been done before, but I'll try to look into that more.
We’ve seen how Ron Paul’s bill auditing the Federal Reserve has gained traction. But he has been putting it to vote for +20 years. It wasn’t until the public cared (probably because most didn’t know what exactly the Federal Reserve was until last year) did it start getting backing in congress. So until the general public acknowledges the problem with lobbyist and campaign contributions nothing will change, even if it should.
ReplyDeleteI think the solution would be a bill started by someone like a Ron Paul that would create a purse of money for each candidate (probably tax payer money) that could not be exceeded. Obviously, this would be scaled: President race 2 million, senate race 1 million, house race 500k, etc. The reason it has to start with the general public is because it would be tax payer money funding the purses. The public would have to understand the greater good would be to get lobbyists and alternative-motive campaign contributors out of politics.
It appears that some regulatory policies are in place, but there is a problem with so called “soft-money” which gets past the bans. A problem in Great Britain is that candidates are limited in what they can spend but not the parties. Looking at Great Britain, Spain, and France it appears they all suffer from not regulating their own policies to prevent candidates being bought. This is probably because we are asking the candidates to police themselves and to take away funds they themselves used to get elected.
http://www.ifes.org/publication/19b6815423e2f21f715bebd61174250b/Campaign_Finance.pdf
Good assessment Jarrod. Steve, there's someone named Thomas Ferguson who already has done the legwork.
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