{"id":3797,"date":"2010-04-20T15:39:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=3797"},"modified":"2010-04-20T15:44:53","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:44:53","slug":"gambling-with-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/04\/20\/gambling-with-the-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambling With the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Follow <a title=\"Commenttary by Roger Lowenstein\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/20\/opinion\/20lowenstein.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>this link<\/strong><\/a> to the commentary in the <em>New York Times<\/em> by Roger Lowenstein.<\/p>\n<p>Sort of playing devil&#8217;s advocate against his own thesis about standardizing derivatives trades, Lowenstein writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Wall Street might have legal grounds to fight this &#8211; after all, a derivative is a contract between private parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Can we think of any other contracts that are between private parties, but are illegal?<\/p>\n<p>Gambling outside the banking industry, prostitution, selling recreational drugs, destruction of wetlands, building unsafe buildings, selling unsafe foods,\u00a0 &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When a transaction is deemed to be harmful to society, we don&#8217;t seem to have any problem justifying its regulation.\u00a0 That is of course, unless you are rich enough or can wield sufficient political power.<\/p>\n<p>So the real question is, <q>Can Wall Street wield enough bribery and political power to avoid having their harmful practices curtailed?<\/q> Put this way, perhaps even Tea Party fans could understand the stakes.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives seem to think,\u00a0 <q>government can interfere with my sex life but they better keep their hands off my money.<\/q> The liberals, on the other hand, seem to think <q>sure, go ahead and put controls on my money, but leave my sex life alone.<\/q><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Follow this link to the commentary in the New York Times by Roger Lowenstein. Sort of playing devil&#8217;s advocate against his own thesis about standardizing derivatives trades, Lowenstein writes: Wall Street might have legal grounds to fight this &#8211; after all, a derivative is a contract between private parties. Can we think of any other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3802,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}