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Responding to a John Quiggin post lamenting the fact that the financial disasters of the late 90s produced no real regulatory action, Matt Yglesias says:

Whatever you think of Greenspan’s overall legacy […] I think it’s a bit hard to regret that he acted swiftly and decisively to keep the world out of a major recession at the turn of the millennium….Letting things fall apart would have led to millions of additional unemployed people, state budget crises, cutbacks in critical social services, etc., etc., etc.

But it really does seem that the success of these operations was taken as a reason to avoid any serious systematic reform. And you can feel the same kind of thing happening today. It’s disturbing.

You can say that again.  Part of the reason for this might be the fact that even now, with wild figures being routinely thrown around about the size of the bailout ($17 trillion! $23 trillion! 3 years of GDP!), most people still don’t truly understand the size and scope of the government action that was required to keep the private sector from melting down completely.  And the reason is pretty simple: the vast, vast majority of it was done behind the scenes by the Fed.  TARP and the stimulus bill were the only parts that really got any public scrutiny.  All the rest was done without congressional debate via an alphabet soup of loan guarantees, term facilities, interest rate reductions, conservatorships, currency swaps, commercial paper backstops, interest on reserve balances, liquidity pumps, collateral forbearance, asset stop-loss guarantees, and more.  This stuff is never going to add up to the astronomical sums people have been tossing out, but it’s still a huge amount of money.  And without it, the entire financial industry would have collapsed.

But in the event, the Fed did do all this stuff, and the result is that what most people see is a bad recession but nothing more.  Just part of the business cycle, thankyouverymuch, and like other recessions it will end soon and life will go on.  And needless to say, the financial industry will be lobbying its ass off to make sure that Congress is inclined to see things the same way.  Disturbing indeed.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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