It's now plain to see that Krugman is very biased in favor of HRC, suggests he is begging for a place in her cabinet. But first he needs correcting:
~ Robert Reich
Ordinarily I wouldn’t pick on a particular columnist but I respect Paul Krugman. Also, his perch at the New York Times gives him broad influence – especially just two and a half weeks before the important New York State primary. But his piece today (which I’ve attached) is shot through with errors.
1. The biggest Wall Street banks did indeed precipitate the crisis on Wall Street in 2008 because of their gambling in newfangled financial instruments and fancy derivatives even they didn't understand.
2. Their size did make a difference because they were so interconnected with other financial entities both in the U.S. and around the world that they were "too big to fail." Today's biggest Wall Street banks are much bigger than they were in 2008.
3. Size also has a bearing on their political influence. The reason the Glass-Steagall Act was scotched by Bill Clinton's administration, and the Clinton administration wouldn't agree with the CFTC to regulate derivatives, had a lot to do with the influence of Wall Street over the Clinton administration and over Congress. The political power of the biggest players on the Street is even larger today – as evidenced by their capacity to whittle back significant parts of Dodd-Frank in the regulatory process.
4. Breaking up the biggest banks isn’t a radical idea. In fact, many experts – including the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (who’s a Republican and a former executive of Goldman Sachs), and the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas -- have called for exactly this.
5. Bernie's other ideas -- for a single-payer plan, and for free tuition at public institutions of higher education – are sensible, and also backed by many experts. It’s well-established that a single-payer plan would be far less costly and deliver far better care than our own system, which is based on private for-profit insurers. As to free tuition in public universities, we were well on the way to this goal in the 1950s and 1960s. It was and is a logical extension of free K-12 education.
6. Finally, the current brouhaha over who's "qualified to be president" was arguably started by Hillary Clinton. Personally, I think neither she nor Bernie should be calling the other unqualified, but to blame Bernie for this exchange is simply incorrect.
Mr. Sanders’s shocking ignorance on his core issue
By Editorial Board April 7 at 7:40 PM
MORE THAN anything else, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has based his campaign on attacking Wall Street — the millionaires and billionaires who, by his telling, wrecked the U.S. economy, dominate the political system and must be brought to heel. Given his commitment to the message, you might expect he would have some familiarity with the policy details and implications.
A New York Daily News editorial board interview with the candidate proved otherwise. The senator seemed to have no idea of what reformed banks should look like, or whether he would need new legislation, even though the government under his presidency would play a central role in tearing apart these complex financial institutions.
Mr. Sanders followed the interview with what was meant to be a clarifying statement. [ https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-break-big-fail-banks/ ] The treasury secretary would draw up a list of too-big-to-fail banks, Mr. Sanders explained, and break them up under the authority of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In an interview with us, Sanders policy adviser Warren Gunnels said that current regulators are not applying existing authorities aggressively enough and that Mr. Sanders would pick a strong treasury secretary with no Wall Street ties to fill in many of the details.
It’s astonishing that, on this of all issues, the campaign would need to issue a what-the-candidate-meant-to-say statement. Even then, the campaign has left a lot of essential questions unanswered.
Here’s one: What is breaking up the banks meant to accomplish?
From what Mr. Sanders and his campaign have said, you could posit several possibilities: protecting taxpayers, safeguarding the financial system, making the financial sector less concentrated and reducing the financial sector’s share of the total economy. Explaining that he wants to do all of these things is not sufficient, because policies differ depending on which goal you prioritize. Regulators working under Dodd-Frank, for example, have gone a long way to addressing the first two issues without breaking up banks, a step that many experts warn may not be worth the costs. If banking-sector concentration is Mr. Sanders’s concern, then he should explain why addressing it would justify those costs; after all, countries such as Canada have more concentrated [ http://www.nber.org/digest/dec11/w17312.html ]banking systems and yet weathered the financial crisis much better. If, on the other hand, Mr. Sanders wants to shrink the overall financial sector, he must explain how breaking up a few banks into a larger number of medium-size banks would contribute.
Many voters share Mr. Sanders’s disdain for high finance and his nostalgia for an economy based more on manufacturing. But such prejudices, whether sound or not, provide an insufficient basis for remaking the world’s largest economy. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has a banking-sector reform proposal designed to address the highest risks to the financial system that remain after the first round of reform. Mr. Sanders has yet to furnish anything of equivalent rigor. We hope he provides more clarity in next week’s Democratic debate.
After his difficult day the other day . .;) .. Bernie goes to the hotel room ... . sits down and takes a well deserved ... .big sigh...... and then it comes to him, 'I know!,,, I'll call the Pope and See if he will see me !!! .. I will tell him how desperate I feel I am .... and he really really is ... the Pope picks it up and tells him come on .... .what a pandering pleading, begging unable to hide, ridiculous ass he is!
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