Bill Moyers: Crony Capitalism (video & transcript)

Bill Moyers ^ | January 20, 2012 | Bill Moyers

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Bill Moyers and former White House budget director David Stockman on how politics and high finance have turned our economy into a members-only private club.

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David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan, now a businessman says he was “taken to the woodshed” for telling the truth about the administration’s tax policies. Stockman speaks candidly with Bill Moyers about how money dominates politics, distorting free markets and endangering democracy. “As a result,” Stockman says, “we have neither capitalism nor democracy. We have crony capitalism.”

[combat_boots]

Bill Moyers? The Soros a$$ kisser?

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Give it a look see before completely dismissing it. http://billmoyers.com/episode/crony-capitalism/

Here's a quote from the transcript for a taste:

DAVID STOCKMAN: You can't save free enterprise by suspending the rules just at the hour they're needed. The rules are needed when it comes time to take losses. Gains are easy for people to realize. They're easy for people to capture. It's the rules of the game are most necessary when the losses have to occur because mistakes have been made, errors have been made, speculation has gone too far. The history has always been -- and this is why we had Glass-Steagall and a lot of the legislation in the 1930s.

• BILL MOYERS: Glass-Steagall was the provision --
• DAVID STOCKMAN: The division of banks between the commercial banking and investment banking and insurance and other --
• BILL MOYERS: So that you, the banker, could not take my deposits and gamble with them, right?
• DAVID STOCKMAN: That's exactly right. And we need not only a reinstitution of Glass-Steagall, but even a more serious limitation on banks. And what I mean by that is, that if we want to have a way for, you know, average Americans to save money without taking big risks and not be worried about the failure of their banking institution, then there can be some narrow banks who do nothing except take deposits, make long-term loans or short-term loans of a standard, business variety without trading anything, without getting into all of these exotic derivative instruments, without putting huge leverage on their balance sheet.

  And we need to say simply, that if you're a bank and you want to have deposit insurance, which ultimately, you know, is backed up by the taxpayer -- if you're a bank and you want to have access to the so-called "discount window" of the Fed, the emergency lending, then you can't be in trading at all.

  Now, on the other hand, if they want to be a hedge fund, then they’ve got to raise risk capital and they have to take the consequences of their risks, both to the good side and the bad side. And until we really approach that issue, and dismantle these giant, multi-trillion dollar balance sheet banks, and separate retail and deposit insured banking from just financial companies, we're going to have recurring bouts of what we had in 2008.

  And they haven't even begun to address that, and it's so disappointing to see that the Obama administration, which in theory should've had more perspective on this than a Republican administration under Bush, to see that one, they appointed in the key positions the same people who brought the problem in: Geithner and Summers and all of those, and secondly, that Obama did nothing about it.

[bkopto]

Moyers? Really? That communist scoundrel personifies the MFM. He has nothing to say that would ever interest me.

If what he says appears to contradict his decades-long propaganda efforts for leftism, then either he has a brain tumor or it is an attempt at misdirection.

[SaraJohnson]

I agree with the bottom line of this missive. There is too much influence for limo liberal globalist corporate biggies in Congress these days.

Whereas the Dems would try to curtail free speech of corporates, I think we should study the matter, see where they are most effective in buying influence and cut those aspects of the government. The government should not be involved in making and breaking business except to promote America’s workforce and business overseas.

We should limit the ability of retired government employees, Congressional staff and elected officials to serve as influence peddelers with their pals in Congress. This practice corrupts.

A flat tax would stop corporatists from trying to buy tax loopholes. When I worked for the government, no politican would dare try to influence contract awards for favors. There was a process of competition and as a contracting officer for NIH, the process of award I conducted not ever decided politically. The value of the science was ranked by committees of peers and it was evaluated by me as to it’s business plan and cost. We should return to that ethic. It should be unethical for anyone in power to contact a government contracting operation, in a competitive process, for influence.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Much better than the crony governmentalism you’ve been involved in all your life, Bill......