Bankruptcy Fraud
Okie Lawyer Derails New Bankruptcy Law

 

 

 

The Okie Lawyer, who has a column, spoke out about the new bankruptcy reform law and it only helps credit card companies, and does nothing to stop white-collar criminals from washing their hands of their crime in the bankruptcy court while U.S. Trustees are turning a blind to it, and to the mounds of criminal complaints about bankruptcy trustees frauding debtors.

Below his column are many comments from readers, including a fraud victim.

 

 

Is Market Fundamentalism the Problem?

Okie Lawyer
January 29, 2007


Over 20 years ago, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly said: "Government is not the solution. government is the problem."

The acceptance of this idea has led to several rounds of tax cuts and cuts in social programs. The populace, having generally accepted the central idea that government was inefficient and ineffectual, elected politicians that voted to cut social programs and cut taxes because, the voting public was repeatedly told: "you can spend your money better than the government can."

Now we are starting to come full circle; the political pendulum is swinging back. Market Fundamentalism, as a progressive think tank called the Longview Institute calls it, is starting to be questioned.

The Longview Institute provides a definition of Market Fundamentalism: "Market Fundamentalism is the exaggerated faith that when markets are left to operate on their own, they can solve all economic and social problems."

I suspect we are just now starting to see the pendulum swing back toward the idea that sometimes government provides the only effective solution.

After the Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham fraud scandals, the Enron fraud and other major corporate bankruptcies, the attempt to privatize Social Security, our health care mess, the current housing bubble and the rising debt problems have led the public to question just how "efficient" the markets really are.

Many of these problems are based on excessive greed by private business interests to outright financial fraud using government as the conduit to commit the crime.

The public, I suspect, has become dissillusioned with the idea that the "market" will solve their problems. The public appears to now be starting to think: "the free markets are not the solution, they are the problem."

The problem right now is that our country is out of balance. We do not have laws strong enough to protect the working class against Enron-type dealings. Corporations can file bankruptcy and leave long-employed workers without pensions and health care.

Wages for the working class are not keeping up with inflation; the executive's salaries are rising precipitously at the same time that their employees continuously face insolvency. Health care costs, along with excessive interest rates and fees on short-term and revolving debt, are leading to financial insolvency of the working class.

Furthermore, lending institutions and their lobbyists were able to get the very bankruptcy laws they wanted -- without any debate or amendments -- in to law and reduced their risk of loss like they say they needed.

But did it lead to a reduction in interest rates and fees? Nope. Just the opposite. Interest rates and fees have continually risen even though the risk is less now.

This proves that laissez-faire economics just don't work. The lack of government regulation and interference has allowed excessive greed to ruin the market for those with less economic bargaining power. So, at this point in our history, government is not the problem; it is the solution.

Posted by OkieLawyer at 1/29/2007 07:06:00 AM
Labels: Bankruptcy, Debt, Markets, Politics

3 comments:
Brad said...
Amen!
(that wasn't too fundamentalist of me to say that was it?)

Monday, January 29, 2007 1:40:00 PM
Teri said...
I bought grapes for sale at Safeway for 99 cents a pound. Same thing with cherries. Both came from Chile. Now, exactly how can the local farmers (and I live in an area that is the country's major supplier of sweet cherries) compete with prices like that? Cherries in season here are $2.99.

It's not the farmers' greed that causes those prices. They have to pay a certain rate for labor and there are lots and lots of laws to comply with.

The same is true for many other companies unfortunately and we are again competing with other countries. More laws here is not going to fix that. I don't have the solution, but I'm pretty sure that more government is not the answer.

Monday, January 29, 2007 3:04:00 PM
Heidi said...
Okie Lawyer,
May I add my Amen! to Brad's. I'm glad I linked over and read your post. Thank you.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 7:24:00 PM
Dori said...
Bankruptcy abuse is at the hands of the bankruptcy trustees frauding debtors. Our elected officials are quick to give credit card companies help, but ignore fraud victims pleas to clean up the bankruptcy system. U.S. Trustees are not policing the people working under their noses, stealing people blind. White-collar criminals are allowed to wash their filthy dirty criminal hands in bankruptcy and the victim is left holding the bag again. All the talk of reform is garbage. We need a revolution of the bankruptcy system to clean house of the rats.

//