Good facts about the economic crash but remember also the Credit Default Swaps.
Michael,
As Tomas points out there are issues like credit default swaps, changes to Banking regulations for insurance-like vehicles to allow banks to hedge bad investing, commodities standards of trading altered by the Gramm Banking committee and vastly changed rules in shorting, hedge fund operation and arbitrage operations.
I would love to see the focus put on the history of this finacial disaster because the primary blame is on socialist policy and corruption. A secondary role has to lie with finacial interest largely assisted by Republicans.
Like the old movie line goes of the lawyer talking his client into being forthright in his testimony goes: “You have to be crucified, before you can be resurrected.” We have to be honest that outside of traditional conservatism lies a group riding in the side car that chants free-markets, free-markets at every road juncture and they have played a role. We might as well include discussing that secondary role if we want conservatism to be properly understood.
Conservatism since its first recognition in the era of Burke realized the value of what we inherited in western civilization and knew that change was necessary for the preservation of society and that cultural inheritance. They knew that this change MUST be careful small empirical reform to avoid destructive revolution rationalistic change. With conservatism adhering to the inherited role of Property and Free Exchange we are often found riding in the same bus with Free Marketeers who care little for careful reform with empirical testing and trial.
Empirical knowledge of the effects of careful reform allows for the bad effects of wholesale change to be mitigated and oftern avoided. Men can rely upon their property, their interest and their decisions because they know, under a conservative system, that in the future the rules won’t change so much as to steal from them by arbitrary power under careful reform.
We all have seen (Hernando DeSota, The Mystery of Capital) that in countries outside the western europeon and American model Free Markets alone don’t bring prosperity. Only with the full culture of settled Property Rights and settled law can property be brought into action as capital.
To correct the failure and expose the corruption we must take those short sighted gross ideologues that hitched a ride on our Virtues and expose them along with the corruption and mechanics of the leftists.
I included Dave in this response as perhaps he can shed some light on wholesale rule changes to short selling, or other systems, that were brought about in too sudden a manner so as to produce a fertile climate for instability