{"id":13696,"date":"2018-01-07T19:33:50","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T01:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=13696"},"modified":"2018-01-07T19:33:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T01:33:50","slug":"finding-the-real-motivations-ctd-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/01\/07\/finding-the-real-motivations-ctd-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding The Real Motivations, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the protests in Iran the <strong><em>GOP<\/em><\/strong> may foresee the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but I fear it may be a mirror as described in this <em><strong>WaPo<\/strong><\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/behind-irans-protests-anger-over-lost-life-savings-and-tightfisted-budgets\/2018\/01\/06\/64993a66-f23f-11e7-95e3-eff284e71c8d_story.html?undefined=&amp;utm_term=.ddd72df8a87f&amp;wpisrc=nl_most&amp;wpmm=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The unnamed woman is one of countless Iranians who say their savings have been wiped out by the collapse of fraudulent businesses and unlicensed credit institutions in recent years. Economists are now pointing to the abrupt closure of these poorly regulated institutions as laying the foundation for the unrest that struck Iran starting in late December.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBanks are shutting down without any kind of notice, and it\u2019s creating a huge political and economic backlash at a local level,\u201d said Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n<p>Anger over these losses came on top of years of pent-up frustration over a sluggish economy. When the government announced recent price increases and released an austere budget bill, it ignited at-times violent protests that spread rapidly to dozens of cities nationwide. Demonstrators quickly turned their fury on corrupt officials and the Islamic republic as a whole. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost protests in Iran are over economic issues,\u201d Maloney said. \u201cWhat\u2019s different is that it seems to have tapped into a deep sense of alienation and frustration, that people aren\u2019t just demonstrating for better working conditions or pay, but insisting on wholesale rejection of the system itself.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note &#8220;<em>poorly regulated<\/em>.&#8221; It&#8217;s been an under-reported item that the Trump Administration has been busy loosening regulations, often or always with the justification that they a wet blanket on the economy. My worry stems from the Great Recession, which I (and a number of economists, who are far more credible than myself) believe was triggered through regulation loosening, including the repeal of the old <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Glass\u2013Steagall_legislation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Glass-Steagall<\/strong> <strong>Act<\/strong><\/em><\/a> contained in the<strong><em>\u00a0<a title=\"United States\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\">U.S.<\/a>\u00a0<a class=\"mw-redirect\" title=\"Banking Act of 1933\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Banking_Act_of_1933\">Banking Act of 1933<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>If we were to suffer a repeat of the Great Recession of 2008, would we once again hunker down and wait it out? Remember, when the Bush Administration rendered aid to the financial industry, that generated a lot of outrage and arguably contributed to the Obama victory and the brief Democratic dominance of Congress. Is it enough that the politicos can be voted out, or would we be facing our own set of protests over the mismanagement of the economy? After all, for the little guy (being one of them), the economy runs on what might loosely be called <em>honor<\/em>, the understanding that transactions are honest &amp; etc. But the actions of bankers and insurance (such as bailout recipient <em><strong>AiG<\/strong><\/em>) execs were perceived, and perhaps were, less than honorable: monster bonuses in the face of miserable disaster, running companies right into the ground (see Lehman Brothers), and other such activities, often seen as execs enriching themselves at the expense of the hard-working little guy. Just voting out the arrogant assholes in the <em><strong>GOP<\/strong><\/em> might not be soon enough, visceral enough.<\/p>\n<p>We could see our own set of riots if an economic crash was seen to be a result of Trumpist greed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the protests in Iran the GOP may foresee the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but I fear it may be a mirror as described in this WaPo report: The unnamed woman is one of countless Iranians who say their savings have been wiped out by the collapse \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/01\/07\/finding-the-real-motivations-ctd-2\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13697,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13696\/revisions\/13697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}