Does the USA need a perestroika?

[mrstickball]

ckmlb said:

ManusJustus said:

HappySqurriel said:

Although the United States really needs major reductions in government spending (after all the municipal, state and the federal governments are all spending far more than they take in with little benefit for their citizens) I'm not so sure I would follow the example of the USSR ...

I dont see how Gorbachev's reforms of the Soviet Union, where the political elite were given private control of industry, and America's bailing out of big business, is fundamentally any different.  Take from the poor and give to the rich.

If the US government had not intervened at all in the events after the market collapse and the Banking crisis, what do you think would have happened to those same poor and the economy in general? Great Depression, part 2?

It's the lesser of two evils like most stuff in politics ends up being, although I do think more people should have gone to jail for ripping people off which led to the house of cards collapsin, but the rich and powerful have been screwing over the poor and middle class throughout history.

And despite the hundreds of billions loaned, the banks are still failing. If the credit was insolvent due to bad practices, the loans didn't fix the problem. Bankers still got bonuses while the smart, decent, banks either didn't need loans, or repaid them very quickly.

Furthermore, do you think that the inflation caused by the wreckless practices of the US treasury won't have problems long term?

It would have been much more prudent to spend the funds AFTER the toxic assets had been dealt with at the private level before the government got involved, rather than before. That way, the government could have assisted the industry, and not merely the bad banks.

@ckmlb - If you jailed the people responsible for the mortgage problems, you'd have to arrest a decent number of government employees as well as congressmen and senators that allowed so many government-backed loans to go out to low-income people that defaulted.