Around the turn of the 20th century there began a policy to ensure safe food in this nation. Progressives began exposing the ills of the nation’s food supply which had been singled out in the great American socialist author and later politician Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. Sinclair’s president at the time was Republican Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt not only signed the Pure Food and Drug Law into effect as a result of the outcry resulting from the Jungle but proceeded to assault the fat cats of industry who had garnered tight control of the nation’s wealth. TR quickly gained the nickname “Trust Buster” for his efforts. Teddy also realized industry was quickly destroying the beauty this great nation possessed through greed and despite resistance from Congress moved to set aside land for national parks. He understood that business and industry left unchecked quickly resulted in the destruction of those things Americans valued and were irreparably replaced by greed.

The modern Conservative movement that began with Ronald Reagan must be called out for the sham that it is. The tax and spend label, so easily put on liberal politicians has nothing on these guys. During Ronald Reagan’s eight years the national debt went from $700 billion to $3 trillion. One of the interesting contributors of the escalating debt during the 1980s was the Savings and Loan crisis which was caused by a key legacy of Reaganomics, deregulation. The parallels between the S&L crisis and the current debacle is amazingly similar. Without going into the minutiae of the S&L crisis the main cause of the massive bank failure was an elimination of regulations and the bodies that enforced their oversight. The price tag of the banks’ bailout to the taxpayers in the 1980s totaled $124.6 billion (which would be about $217 billion in today’s money).

With the S&L crisis behind them and no cops on the Wall Street beat the fiscal pirates began an unethical romp through the market knowing the government would ultimately cushion any major blow, just like they did in the 80s. When the dot-com bubble burst and investors shifted their resources further into real-estate, they brought their unsupervised ethics with them. Thus Wall Street was literally blended with Main Street as nefarious practices conducted by unscrupulous individuals in the banking industry blended the investments with mortgage loans. There was no problem as long as the housing bubble remained a bubble.

In all fairness it was Bill Clinton who signed into law an act that allowed commercial banks to branch out into other financial arenas but that bill was signed into law in 1999 and its effects were unknown as Bush, Jr. took office in 2001. What is known is the Bush Administration and his rubber stamp congress allowed Wall Street to go unchecked for seven years even though the signs of an impending crisis were swirling in the air like plastic grocery sacks. Bush, it seems, was focused on one money pit (the Iraq War) to concern himself with a probable second. Like his other two term Republican predecessor, Bush’s debt spiraled out of control. Under his watch the debt has risen from about $6 trillion to over $9 trillion today even though he was handed a surplus when he took office.

So here we are. With the legacy of Reaganomics staring us squarely in the face we proceed to bail out the fat cats. Due to the  desire of those on the right to practice unbridled laissez faire economics, socialism has come to Wall Street. Those guys who were gobbling up $30 million severance packages under the chutzpah that they deserved it because only a few people in America can do what they do turned out to be right, only what they did will cost the American tax payers between $500 billion and one trillion dollars. I wonder how far that amount of money could have helped make the entitlement programs of social security and medicare and Medicaid more solvent?

What we needed was a whole lot more Sinclair Lewises and TRs and a lot less Reagamomics. What we need are a lot more progressives and a lot fewer conservatives. This is unless in fact the foundations of our economy are sound.