The Race To The Bottom

Gordon Brown, or the guy believed to be the brains behind Tony Blair, has acknowledged that:

Ex-prime minister Gordon Brown admitted that he made a "big mistake" in not seeking tighter regulations on banks in the lead up to the financial crisis. The former leader told a conference in the US that he had not fully appreciated how "entangled" the global financial system had become when establishing the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the country's regulatory body.
"We set up the FSA believing the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution," Brown said. "That was the big mistake. We didn't understand just how entangled things were.
"I have to accept my responsibility."

He now understands that:

"There should be an international agreement, otherwise you'll just have banks threatening to move from one country to another," continued Brown.

"Britain was under relentless pressure from the City (Britain's financial centre) that we were overregulating. All through the 10 to 15 years, the battle was not that we regulated too little, but that we regulated too much," he added.

Yes, Gordon, you don't give the banks what they want and they threaten to go off shore..  You don't give business what they want and they threaten to go off shore.  The reality is, if you are going to buy into the concept of globalization and free markets then we need to start regulating our banking and financial industries globally. 

Glad to see that Gordon Brown finally understands! 

That then brings us to the democrats in the United States.  Here is a really good article on how the battle over raising the debt ceiling is going to be played out:

The Republican Playbook for the Debt-Limit Fight

   

Democrats, or at least those who we will now call "Obama Huggers" pay close attention to this:

If the early rhetoric is any indication, House Speaker John Boehner is going to rely on the same playbook he used to best Democrats this time around - leveraging his hard-liners to wrest away most of what he wants. And it is probably going to work once again.

Of course it will work again, because there isn't any hard-liners on THE LEFT to counter balance the threat that the Tea Party presents! 

Obama will present his "spending plan" this week and of course all the "Obama Huggers" will cheer and get all weak in the knees to race out and blog their support.  Its time to realize, as Gordon Brown has on the banking industry, that until someone comes up with a "REVENUE PLAN" all the "Obama Huggers" will have to champion is a less draconian "Path To Prosperity." 

Its such a shame that the "Obama Huggers" continously want to attack the "THE LEFT" without realizing that "THE LEFT" is all they got as an alternative to the Tea Party.