The SEC would only have dared to so blatantly NOT regulate illegal naked shorting if it knew in advance it could rely on the whole apparatus of government for political cover once exposed — which the Obama Adminstration + Congress were pretty quick to provide by pretending a need for new regulation in order to divert from their failure to decapitate the SEC non-enforcers and prosecute the NSSs to the full extent of the law.

This cover-up by the Obamanites with Republican support is an even bigger scandal.

As such the ‘deep capture’ involved is deeper than just the media and regulators, it includes the whole government and the moral bankruptcy of ImperioCapitalist U$A.

But then you favorably cite President Obama’s statement about regulatory reform. Obama spoke about the need to update our “outdated regulatory system”. Yet, as you so ably showed in your video, the problem is NOT that our regulatory system is outdated– the problem is that we do not enforce the regulations we already have.

If Obama and congress plan to purse “modernization” of regulations they are heading down a blind alley. Their bold talk about regulatory reform is nothing more than window-dressing if there is no commitment to actually enforce the perfectly good regulations we already have.

…and here:
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/williams/100508

The (nearly) complete story of the meltdown will be revealed, eventually, I believe. That is a story which neither traditional conservatives nor liberals are very excited about telling completely. You have taken a tiger by its tale to to tell a very important subset of it.

Wow – really well thought out and researched!

The financial meltdown is something I still can’t quite get my head all the way around, and one of my majors was Finance – it’s like a huge spiderweb that someone disassembled and no one’s exactly sure what strands went where (or at least no one claims to)

A couple of things come to mind:

Jon Stewart’s interview with Jim Cramer – he calls Cramer out for being an insider, and artificially boosting investor confidence by presenting an ersatz version of market realities while having a true grasp on actual market realities… the media played a big part in the financial meltdown, as I’m sure you have concluded – I’m guessing you saw it, but if not, you can find it at comedycentral.com

Also, Paul Krugman comes to mind – I read a recent article wherein he lays out his evidence for placing the blame for this financial collapse on Reagan and his administration, for their approach of heavy market deregulation

I like Krugman, and I like Obama, but Obama, rather than listening to the expertise of economists like Krugman, seems to be dead set on convincing Krugman that Geithner’s approach is the correct one … not that economics is an exact science, but there has to be more than just ONE way to fix the mess that’s been left behind

Krugman also has a really good “letter to Obama” in Rolling Stone (January issue, I think), about his advice on fixing things

Again, nice job and well-done explanation – it brought back flashbacks of our AP Econ course at Skyline!

I’m looking forward to Michael Moore’s upcoming movie, and I hope it gives your book some good exposure

Good luck with the book, and I’ll look forward to reading it

- Jon Crowell