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Robert Kuttner lists the seven deadly sins of deregulation -- and three necessary reforms:
Why regulate? As we have seen ever since the sub-prime market blew up in the summer of 2007, government cannot stand by when a financial crash threatens to turn into a general depression -- even a government like the Bush administration that fervently believes in free markets. But if government must act to contain wider damage when large banks fail, then it is obliged to act to prevent damage from occurring in the first place. Otherwise, the result is what economists term "moral hazard"-- an invitation to take excessive risks.
And Sarah Posner has the latest on the religious right:
At this weekend's Values Voter Summit, the annual confab sponsored by Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defense Fund, and American Values, the adoration of Sarah Palin was so intense that it eclipsed her running mate. The prevailing theme of the conference was that feminism was dead because Palin proves its supposed raison-d'etre, abortion, is unnecessary for rising to the heights of power. Glass ceilings could be cracked, the participants maintained, by a woman juggling five kids and a Bible.
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