"It will change"... the only questions are how, why and when...
What Lehman, Bear Stearns, WAMU, and the rest mean... what the "financial crisis" means... is that we're past a tipping point where the problem can no longer be ignored... because the banks and governments now understand that they cannot trust themselves, much less each other.
Without that trust... which is still in the relatively early stages of dissolution... the markets won't work, or, will work less well over time as the result of corruption seen in the lack of trust becomes pervasive. It doesn't solve the problem to transfer the realized risks of frauds in the banks, to the sovereign accounts of the nations that enabled the frauds. What that does, instead, is set up the end game... where the "good faith and credit" is proven no more immune to the impact of fraud and corruption than anything else. Deficit spending is a monetary fraud... that is sustainable only as long as it remains within limits, and is not revealed as the fraud it is. Now, the facts seen in the markets mean we're clearly seeing the Emperor's clothes for what they are... and frauds aren't sustainable when they are that fully exposed.
So, inflation is coming... as that is the only possible way the fraudulently created debts can be largely eliminated... but, inflation in "normal" times is different than inflation imposed during a financial crisis in the middle of a deflationary depression.
"It will change" when the government enabling the experience of the frauds we've had forced on us is insolvent.
"It will change" when market participants increasingly refuse to continue playing the game in markets that are rigged, corrupted, and co-opted... with the power of government used in enforcing the "rights" of the criminals.
"It will change" when the nations that enable perpetrating these sorts of frauds fail... as they will...
Divorcing enforcement of fiduciary responsibilities by market participants from the markets... requires failure.
The objectivist anarcho-liberatarian market types are correct... the market will correct all errors, in time... including theirs. Of course, when the errors you (they) make are of the sort that has you imposing corrupt rule sets that don't work... the failure that results is the systemic failure of the corrupt system that enables corrupt rules. The market WILL correct the imposition of corrupt rule sets... but it will do so by destroying your country.
The United States will either re-impose a proper rule set (that we used to have, which enabled unique benefits as advantages of our superior market systems, as trust existed here, where corruption existed elsewhere) or else we will devolve to a system that is no different than others... as corrupt as any third world banana republic, or China, Europe, etc.
The problem with that sort of leveling, that denies American exceptionalism by deliberately lowering us to the lowest common denominator... is that it IS a lowering... and is not consistent with our national expectations... and we will not abide it. We know who we are... and we are not that...
So... "it will change" as a result of REAL change in the next election... or, if that change is denied by the sorts of efforts in manipulation of election results we've seen in the last few cycles... it will change as a result of the failure of the United States as it is currently constituted.
Without REAL, and PROPER change... that takes us back to "the right rules"... I don't expect we'll last for more than another 5 or 10 years... maybe 15 with a bit of luck relative to others.
Meanwhile, our world has lost the great engine of the global economy, as our system of free markets has been fully co-opted by a system of managed trade... crony capitalism... merchantilism... which makes the entire globe into one giant banana republic.
Fixing it is easy... as all it requires is "doing the right thing"... which means not tolerating fraud, and not enabling frauds by changing rules to make frauds legal. With the right rules... we can restore trust. Without them... we're still heading toward real blood in the streets... in a pattern that is now showing patience in the "pause" with the bounce from the bottom is beginning to wear thin... and we are experiencing an acceleration in events, now, that might easily exceed any ability to control or contain the result.
Hopefully... we'll get REAL reform... and not the faux version the banks advocate that it seems we are being sold by Congress right now. We'll see if there are real teeth in the SEC enforcement effort re Goldman just begun... or if the design there is to take the "best" of the banks, have the enforcement effort fail, and use that failure to slip all of the various transgressions of all the other players past the crowd whose focus is diverted to Goldman.
I expect that IS the plan... I think that we'll be told we got the reform we need... when all we get is a sleight of hand in the form of meaningless "change" that has no real impact... and that the purpose of attacking Goldman now is to use the failure of the effort to enable avoiding addressing any of the other problems.
The illegal take down of WAMU ? Government officials actions clearly exceeding the powers the government has ?
Watch for the resurgence of the assertion of the power of states... as they begin to resist the exercise of unallocated powers the Federal government is usurping. IMO, Arizona insisting the laws there are must be enforced is only one hint of what is coming. Health care "reform"... given what it is, in the context in which we have it (another crony capitalist corporate fraud) is likely to form the fulcrum around which we either restore full and proper constitutional limits on federal power... or else, we will see the nation founder and fail... for lack of legitimacy.
The lack of any requirement that fiduciary responsibilities will be met, apparent in the markets and in our corporations, which we see more clearly now... is matched by a parallel lack of political legitimacy in our goverance...
We know government and the banks are corrupt, together... that government enabled the corruptions of the banks, for purpose...
There is not yet much public awareness that there are no boundaries between the corruption in the markets, and the corruption of money in politics. There are many who still think Republicans and Democrats are "different"... when both serve the same masters... who are not the voters, or the American people, or, the law, or "the right rules", or "the right thing".
Watch for change there... and you might recognize the Tea Party as a political parallel to the sort of recognition events we've seen begun in the markets already.
If government lived by the laws we wrote to restrain them... we'd not have the problems we have now. The corruption that matters most... is the fiction of the Constitution being a "living document"... which is the same thing as saying you'll allow those in power to say that "the law says whatever we want it to say".
The "living document" theory is a fraud. Much of the law we have imposed on us now is fraudulent... as it is based in knowing fraudulent interpretation of law.
Restore the Constitution... so that the only changes in fundamental law that are allowed are those that occur by amendment, rather than interpretation... and we might be able to restore trust...
Otherwise, the system is corrupt... and its corruption is pervasive and advanced to the degree that it is choking us.
I do believe there are those who WANT that result... who enable, pursue and defend the corruptions they do... in order to deliver that result.
I'm not one of those... I'd prefer we fix what is broken, adopt the right rules, have a government that lives within the law, that creates a reason to restore our trust... rather than see the nation self destruct.
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