Hi Skip. Thanks for the feedback.
You seem to be putting some of the blame for the sub prime crisis on Dodd/Frank.. You are aware that Dodd/Frank was passed after the sub prime crisis, right? Sure, the Clinton/Bush affordable housing policies might have contributed to the crisis, but according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission they likely played a minor role. More significant were the deregulations championed by the self-proclaimed «life-long libertarian» Alan Greenspan, which set the banking sector free from the post-great-depression lending- and investment standards that had kept its greed in check for the past half-century: The repeal of Glass-Steagall; the loosening of capital reserve rules; the failure to regulate derivatives and the shadow banking system, etc. There was nothing socialist about any of these deregulations. On the contrary, they were flagrantly libertarian.
If you want to know what a democratic socialist (i.e. mixed economy) banking system looks like, consider the Norwegian system: After the 1988 banking crisis, our financial sector was partially nationalized. All our major banks now have about one third public — two thirds private ownerships. The result has been a remarkably stable financial system. While the deregulated U.S. Banking sector fixated single-mindedly on maximizing its short term profits, while ignoring the systemic risk this imposed on the overal economy, Norwegian banks were barred from investing in either subprime-based bonds nor Icelandic bank bonds, as the Norwegian government deemed these assets to cary too much macroeconomic risk. In a 2018 article for Rethinking Economics, former head of the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway Bjorn Skogstad Aamo ascribes the development of this cautionary attitude to the 1988 banking crisis and the subsequent public ownership of banks.
Your finacial sector has proven its ability to bring your entire economy to its knees, as well as its inability to self-regulate or to resist the lure of high-rate-of-return investments that comes at socio-economically unacceptable systemic risk. Alowing this sector to stay in the hands of private investors, who are soly concerned with maximizing their own short term profits, is flagrently reckless.
To quote from a recent piece I wrote for Foreign Policy: «According to the World Bank, Norway and the United States have nearly identical GDP per capita. Yet Norway, unlike the United States, enjoys universal health care, child care, and elder care, as well as tuition-free universities, around 12 months of paid parental leave, and a robust social safety net. (…) Students graduate without the horrifying debt burdens of their U.S. counterparts. Those who sustain injuries in traffic accidents never have to beg bystanders not to call for an ambulance, for fear of drowning in medical debt. Norwegian diabetics don’t need to crowdsource their insulin. As seniors, they don’t spend their golden years working at Walmart or living in their vehicles. Their homes were not repossessed en masse by banks during the Great Recession. Extensive public ownership shields Norwegians from the harshest aspects of unfettered capitalism.
If you think I said anything false, or quoted some unreliable source, please be spesific. Otherwise its hard to argue.
