Paul
Krugman
In May
2009 Congress created a special commission to examine the causes of
the financial crisis. The idea was to emulate the celebrated Pecora Commission of the 1930s, which used
careful historical analysis to help craft regulations that gave America two generations
of financial stability.
But some
members of the new commission had a different goal. George Santayana famously
remarked that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
What he didn’t point out was that some people want to repeat the past — and
that such people have an interest in making sure that we don’t remember what
happened, or that we remember it wrong.
Sure enough, some commission members sought to block
consideration of any historical account that might support efforts to rein in
runaway bankers. As one of those members, Peter Wallison of the American
Enterprise Institute, wrote to a fellow Republican on the
commission, it was important that what they said “not undermine the ability of
the new House G.O.P. to modify or repeal Dodd-Frank,” the financial regulations
introduced in 2010. Never mind what really happened; the party line, literally,
required telling stories that would help Wall Street do it all over again.
Which
brings me to a new movie the enemies of financial regulation really, really
don’t want you to see.
“The Big Short” is based on the Michael Lewis book of the same name, one of
the few real best-sellers to emerge from the financial crisis. I saw an early
screening, and I think it does a terrific job of making Wall Street skulduggery
entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down.
