Financial Sector Quotes
Arguably, for most of American History, most of the “smartest” people contributed to manufacturing, construction, research and development—activities that produce things that are wanted and/or needed. However, Wall Street began attracting and paying for some of the smartest people in the society, who when they engaged in finance—not only contributed less to manufacturing, but began to create highly complex financial instruments and procedures that few people could understand and with which regulators have difficulty understanding. These and the other schemes of financing have been major factors in the economic problems that have beset the economy including the meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent Great Rescission.
This quotation is particularly interesting in it shows how far partisanship and ideology can go into deluding political perception. Wallinson is a man of integrity who we must assumed believed what he said. Yet in the 30 years he referred to, most had Republican Presidents and there were a number of Republican controlled Congresses. During all that time the Republican Party platform called for continuous deregulation. Every Republican President and even Democrat William Clinton has bragged about their success at deregulating the business and financial environment in America. During that period, left wingers paraded to testify to Congress that the deregulation policies and practices was in their view injuring the country, While there was great debate over the desirability of deregulation, virtually no elected politician of the left or right denied that deregulation was happening. The Chamber of Commerce during that time always complained that the deregulation was not occurring fast enough and consumer groups claimed the rate was too fast. Yet Wallinson instead of taking the position of most conservatives that the deregulation had little or nothing to do with the Financial Crisis of 2008, actually convinced himself that there had been no deregulation. Human perception of political reality can be easily altered by ideology. Similar delusions have also occurred for left wingers. It is the ideology who is vulnerable regardless of what the ideology is.
