E.J. Dionne on Goldman Sachs and FinReg

Well-known progressive E.J. Dionne is a twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post, writing on national policy and politics, as well as a University Professor at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and a regular political commentator. In this op-ed, Dionne observes that Goldman Sachs isn’t the only one on trial right now — so is our entire financial system. Capitalism has survived thus far because of programs established after the Great Depression, but to ensure that it continues to exist we need to regulate it in the public interest. Whether or not Goldman Sachs’ complicated financial instruments were legal, why should they be? Dionne takes this question on:

Maybe the next time someone calls Barack Obama a socialist, the president shouldn’t issue a denial. He might instead urge his accuser to read the hearing transcript of this week’s congressional testimony from the Goldman Sachs guys in their beautiful suits.

Capitalism has not taken a hit like this since Mr. Potter made his appearance as the evil banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” No leftist polemicist could come up with as damning a description of contemporary capitalism as the contents of an e-mail that Goldman’s Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre sent to his girlfriend.

“Well,” he wrote, “what if we created a ‘thing,’ which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?”

Read the full piece on the Washington Post.