Jerry Brown: California's Own Bernie Madoff - S. Chais. Mindless Republican - ruling establishment deregulation-mania of the last decade - abetted and made possible by a complicit right wing Republican ruling establishment class in Congress, SEC, and inattentive Republican White House. But regulators and federal officials were lulled to sleep by a pervasive ideology that private vice on Wall Street would always be transmogrified into public virtue. America is paying the price for this noxious doctrine in unprecedented job losses and an avalanche of foreclosures.
Let's not wait for the next Chais or Madoff to be exposed.Washington must put in place real oversight of the financial industryOne obvious reform would be to strip away Washington's preemption of state regulatory authority. This would allow the attorneys general of the 50 states to act as true guardians of the public trust and bring to justice the rip-off artists and malefactors who even today enjoy virtual immunity.
