wise words! A lot of Republicans are frightened of anti-trust out of sheer principal, but I think we should look to Teddy Roosevelt for our inspiration when it comes to the financial services industry.
Either break them up, or regulate them into being utilities, with the risk-taking parts of them cut away from government backing.
I fear you and the mindset that led to your comments.
I don’t think that would work, the idea of making them utilities. One of the reasons that people can make money is that they have the option of determining the amount of risk they wish to be exposed to relative to the possible profits that they might derive from that risk.
Turning the financial services industry into a utility would mean removing the risk, and I simply don’t think that would work. I am not one of those people who thinks there should be no regulation on the industry, I model my outlook on this viewpoint after those held by the framers of the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution by no means felt that government and of itself was bad, they felt that man is of a basically corruptible nature, and cannot be trusted by default.
I feel much the same way about financial institutions. Greed, sex, and lust for power are things that human beings are susceptible to as levers to immoral behavior, and if we set things up a certain way, we should not do it so as to encourage a breeding environment for immoral behavior.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but I don’t think that’s the correct approach. I will say that I do believe that the government should not be involved hand-in-hand with these institutions. That leads to things like bailouts and political decisions by politicians about who is and who isn’t too big to fail, as well is making it easy for people (both politicians and financiers) to get their hands in the public till.