Sunday, May 09, 2010
Some of the highest profile business disasters in recent history have been driven by greed, demonstrating how important it is to usher in a new era of government regulation, argues Robert Reich, formerly of the Clinton administration and now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
BP, whose oil rig is polluting the Gulf of Mexico, Massey Energy, whose West Virginia mine killed 29 workers, and Goldman Sachs, whose stock market schemes helped bring about the 2008 financial crisis, were all involved in “massive plunder.” The push by their shareholders to earn bigger and bigger profits spurred reckless decisions by executives whose income is linked to stock market performance, but the companies also benefited from three decades of deregulation in Washington that spanned both Democratic and Republican administrations.
“After thirty years of deregulation, it’s time for the rebirth of regulation: Not heavy-handed and unnecessarily costly regulation, but regulation that’s up to the task of protecting the public from companies and executives that will do almost anything to make a buck,” writes Reich.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
The Rebirth of Regulation (by Robert Reich)
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