MONEY MATTERS

The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission began taking testimony on Wednesday. In its first panel, the commission grilled four major financial-industry honchos. The banker’s testimony showed a stunning failure, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. This shows that the supposed wise men of the Wall Street, have no wisdom to offer and there is no need for the Congress and the administration to listen to their advice as they try to reform the financial system.
The U.S. economy is still fighting with the consequences of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and trillions of dollars of potential income have been lost; the lives of millions have been damaged, in some cases irreparably, by mass unemployment; millions more have seen their savings wiped out; hundreds of thousands, will lose essential health care because of the combination of job losses and draconian cutbacks by cash-strapped state governments.
This disaster was entirely self-inflicted. This is not like the stagflation of the 1970s, which had a lot to do with soaring oil prices, which were, in turn, the result of political instability in West Asia. This time we are in trouble entirely due to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this except the financiers.

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