Yesterday while driving back and forth across the bay area, I listed briefly to an interview with Law professor Michael Greenberger, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University’s Center for Health and Homeland Security, on NPR’s Fresh Air. This interview is one of the best descriptions of the current economic situation in the United States that I have heard to date. Greenberger’s explanation of where we are and how we got here (as well as what else we could expect) is simple enough for the layman to understand. Granted, you still need to pay attention and think through all the connections while trying not to get confused with all the complicated financial terms, but you should be able to do that without needing to reference any text books.
Every person in the United States should listen to this interview. I think the general population would be shocked to learn that (according to Greenberger) this whole mess happened because of a rider added to an omnibus appropriate bill that was passed by Congress in December 2000. And that this rider wasn’t really understood by the authors of the bill, it was written by lawyers from investment banks on wall street. The effect of this rider was to de-regulate certain financial markets at both the federal and state levels. The end result of this bill is the current situation…sub-prime mortgage crises, credit crisis, recession, and a tax payer bail out of some of the same investment banks that created the entire mess. What happened to the motherly wisdom of teaching your children a lesson: “you made the mess, you clean it up”?
And the real kicker…wait till you hear who the person is that was responsible for that original bill and was talked into adding the rider…and what he’s doing now…
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