EconomicCrisis.US

Today, amid massive budget shortfalls, politicians are scrambling to find new sources of revenue. Many are turning to gambling. Talk about a sucker’s bet!

If public leaders are serious about restoring economic health, they should do just the opposite: recriminalize many forms of gambling.

Academics, business experts, and government officials have consistently warned that government-sanctioned “predatory” gambling activities– such as casino facilities and lotteries – philosophically and fiscally corrupt US and international business, economic, and financial systems.
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The government will take on a mountain of risk while trying to create an artificial market for the loans and debt securities. Critics worry about possible fraud and further banking system damage.

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles — The Obama administration’s impending effort to buy about $1 trillion in toxic assets in partnership with private investors — aimed at solving the most intractable part of the credit crisis — is now generating widespread fear that it is vulnerable to manipulation and carries sharp risks for taxpayers.

The program represents the biggest gamble yet in the federal bailout, but its still-hazy details have prompted bankers, economists, federal investigators and politicians to question whether it will solve the financial crisis. More than 400 written comments were recently submitted to the Treasury Department, many of them sharply negative.
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President Barack Obama sees a chink of light for the world’s biggest economy after hustling through an enormous stimulus package and ordering far-reaching reforms in his first 100 days.

Economic revival is the centerpiece of the Democratic leader’s young presidency, the benchmark by which his administration will be judged as the United States endures its worst recession since World War II.

“There are still serious problems in this economy,” top White House economic adviser Larry Summers said Sunday on Fox News.

“But both with respect to the financial side and … with respect to the income side, the measures we’ve taken I think are very strong and offer the prospect of containing a very serious situation,” he said.
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In a windowless room at the Westin Hotel in downtown Denver, leading business journalists and editors explained how the media “blew it” in covering the economic meltdown. They admitted, on one hand, to falling under the sway of free-market ideology and celebrating risk-taking financial leaders and, on the other, to missing the complex story of the rupturing system by only reporting it in parts and to almost no effect for the past decade.

Although not planned as confession, the discussion, which kicked off the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), quickly descended into an unburdening, with the panelists taking turns voicing their own explanations and excuses for the failure. Former Wall Street Journal managing editor and current ProPublica.org chief Paul Steiger moderated the impromptu journalistic penitence.
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