Bill Moyers interviewed William Black in April 2009.

The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout.

The title of Black’s book about the S & L crisis is “The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One.”

I am in the process of reading that book now. In this interview by Bill Moyers, it was very interesting to hear Black bring the insights from his own experience and apply them to the current crisis.

If you are investing in the financial industry, stop immediately.

(Disclosure, I do own stock in AINV, CINF, and PSEC.  Is this following my own advice above?  I don’t know.  Is this a case of cognitive dissonance?  Again, I don’t know.  Someone, please help me before I invest again.)

It is also interesting to compare what Black had to say about Japan’s economic woes and what Paul Krugman had to say in the article alluded to in my post Things Could Be Worse, Let The Republicans Show Us How.

Paul Krugman in The New York Times piece Things Could Be Worse explains how bad it is in Japan.  Yet our Republicans could make our economy even worse than that.

It’s hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits — the perfect combination.