re: #163 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

Especially repealing Glass-Steagall Act (which actually happened under Clinton), allowing mortgage bankers to engage in commercial speculation with mortgage money.

Mortgages are subsidized (indirectly through tax credits) so this was basically the government subsidizing an enormous speculative bubble.

The short-term effect of deregulation is to allow businessmen to make more money. The long-term effect is to force businesses, or more likely governments, to step in and clean up the messes created by the deregulation. Except, there has been no real “clean-up” of the mortgage crisis of the last decade. It could happen again.