Government: answer to the economy... start a commission

The New York Times --

Two amendments, both which would create a special commission to dive into the roots of the economic collapse and create a select committee to investigate the causes of the nation's financial crisis.

“Today’s vote by the Senate is major progress on my effort to get to the bottom of this financial crisis. While I also support an outside commission, and have previously introduced legislation to establish such a commission, I believe the Senate has an important oversight responsibility that cannot be delegated. That’s why we need a select Senate committee to investigate this financial crisis and make sure it never happens again.” said Senator Dorgan.

Senator Comrade commented, "... we must hold those responsible for this calamity to account..."

Conrad said that it would be a 10 member panel, modeled after the 9/11 commission.

“The bottom line is I think everybody wants to get to the bottom of why this happened,” Representative Steny Hoyersaid. “What were the failures of regulation? Was it regulatory negligence? Was it regulations were not sufficient? Were they not applied to some of the financial activities outside of the banking and insurance industries?

where do I start...How about the way that we jacked around the interest rates for fears of inflation, making it more expensive for businesses to expand and hire more people, interest rates on credit cards which are based on the prime rate mostly, etc.?
How about not capping the prices on fuel when they skyrocketed out of control?
How about continually raising taxes?
uncontrolled spending?
And is basically being out of touch.


Former Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota had a novel idea...

“By going to a national sales tax,[and eliminating the current federal income tax] you would get the gross of your check, and you would decide what you're taxed on by what you bought. Now, what else does that do? It gets everyone - drug dealers, illegal aliens, tourists. Everyone would pay to the economy. And what it also does - it puts the government then on a direct budget with the economy. If the economy struggles, so would government. So it would be in government's best interest then to keep the economy good. Right now the government doesn't suffer, private citizens do if the economy goes bad.
{Source = Minnesota public radio August 24, 1998}