The NYT says regulation is back in bipartisan fashion:
WASHINGTON — For 30 years, the nation’s political system has been tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules. But that is about to change, now that the government has been forced to intervene in the once high-flying financial industry to avert an economywide crash.
An expansion of the government’s role in financial markets is certain: on Friday the Treasury Department updated its recommended reforms of the existing regulatory structure, which it will leave to the next president and Congress.
Congressional leaders and both presidential candidates already have their own, more far-reaching ideas, from further restricting executives’ pay to remaking the entire regulatory structure so that it better supervises both traditional activities and newer ones like credit-default swaps that are unregulated.
But the pro-regulation climate will probably spill over into other sectors. That seems especially likely now that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are pumping money into corporations of all types to shore up their capital and to finance day-to-day operations until credit markets recover, and with the auto industry separately getting billions in government assistance.
That will give impetus to those who seek new emission curbs and energy limits to address climate change; or who want health care mandates to expand insurance coverage and restrain costs; or who are calling for new safeguards for food, prescription drugs and toys from China and other less-regulated trading partners.
“We now have a collective anger, disgust, over our whole financial system and it’s obvious we’re going to get a regulatory backlash,” said Robert E. Litan, an economist at the Brookings Institution who has studied financial and regulatory issues for decades. “And we know it’s going to come in a big way in 2009.”
Mr. Litan predicts a spillover effect to other industries because voters have the perception that “big companies are animals and they need to be put in their cages.”
Great. Let’s all just call it "National Airport" again and cut the bullshit.
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I never stopped calling it National.
Every time I drive past the sign for the “Ronald Reagan Turnpike” I flip it the bird.
Wow, if we’re going to get regulation back, can we go all in and also ask that people with actual competence be put into executive branch appointments?
I never stopped calling it National.
me either
Yes, Pach, let’s roll all of them back to their real names.
now don’t be given a gal false hope there Pach,
in the few moments I allow myself some wishful/magical thinking, I think about BO going all FDR, all the time, somehow we all survive and overcome what they have done to us as a nation . . .and we bury Reagan once and for all
Same here.
Remember when the GOP Congress freaked out that WMATA (the DC Metro system) hadn’t stepped right up to change the schedules and signage to reflect the name change they’d shoved down the throats of DC? (WMATA was trying to save $100,000 it cost for signage changes because it had and has more pressing needs, like keeping the cars running with the relative pittance Congress gives them.) They actually threatened to totally defund all of WMATA and fuck over the entire DC area unless WMATA spent money it didn’t have for the signage and schedule changes.
Actually, calling it Reagan National is unexpectedly fitting. The builders of Reagan simply took the quarter-century-old air traffic control electronics from National and reinstalled them in Reagan’s new air traffic control tower. Appearance of progress. Real progress, not so much.
Ditto Reagan International trade center in downtown D.C. Up on the — 8th, I think it is — floor, the government employees’ offices have NO windows. Think of putting in 60+ hour weeks, week and week out, with no natural sunlight (many gov’t employees put in such hours routinely, even without overtime pay).
In addition, the corridors on that floor are reportedly so narrow that, in a fire, people in wheelchairs would have real problems evacuating. The report was from a former colleague of mine whose own office, at the time, was on that narrow & windowless corridor. We had another colleague, also in that office, who got around only by wheelchair. The concerns for her physical safety were real.
That’s the Spirit of Ronald Reagan, all right! Just to remind us all of what he stood for, there are a few things on which I might leave his name.
Me neither.
Hey Pach!
Wow. You’ve got a lotta nerve!
Thank you for that. ;->
Mebbe name a landfill after him, or a toxic waste dump.
Wasn’t there some group out in Oakland or something that tried to pull that off?
Why would anyone object to naming the airport of our nation’s capital for The Butcher of People’s Park, for the Great Denier of AIDS?
I dunno. I’d sign on. heh.
The waste dump or plant, whatever, was named for W. Equally fitting.
It would fit.
(((((mods))))) You de BEST!
I correct people who call it Reagan. It happens a lot where my mom lives; I just say, “Where? Oh, you mean National Airport.”
There’s a freeway in Los Angeles that can be renamed. (Nobody here refers to it as the “Ronald Reagan Freeway” anyway: it’s called the 118 by everyone.) If the folks in Simi and Moorpark really want a freeway named for St Ronny, they can keep it, but only in their area.
We have a couple of office buildings in CA that can be renamed, too.
That would be a good follow up post: a list of things that can have their dignity restored by renaming or name restoration. Could involve a little research, though maybe the site for the RR library has a list?
I’d recommend that post!
I suggest that they should name Alzheimer’s treatment facilities after him, and possibly if there’s a retirement home for clowns (best) or circus performers (not quite as good) that would be appropriate.
and can we also de-name anything already named after j edgar hoover as well?