After listening to one financial reporter after another speculate that China would bolster the U.S. economy because it didn’t want to lose out on its investments, I am seriously convinced the readers on Wall Street decided that that same effect could be counted on from domestic investors. That would go a long way – during the past years of deregulation and deceit by our mogul hordes – to explain the losses brought on in this economy by complete abandonment of judgment in managing financial affairs.

Sadly, the lesson seems to have been passed on to the administrations of this country and the nations of Europe, in their reliance on the financial moguls who made the mistakes to bring us back from the brink that they created. A European think tank on economic matters, ALTER-EU (Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation) is calling for increased participation by interests of the affected rather than affecting parties.

The vast majority of financial ‘experts’ advising the European Commission represent the banks and investors responsible for the global economic crisis, according to a new report published today by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER EU) [1].

The Commission must break free from these advisors on financial issues if it is serious about reforming the failed financial system, say the authors.

‘A captive Commission – the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation’ examines how before, during and in the wake of the worst financial crisis for a generation, the Commission chose to listen almost exclusively to the finance industry.

Expert Groups – bodies set up to advise the Commission – which gave, or still give, advice on financial issues are overwhelmingly dominated by representatives from the financial industry, with scarcely any representatives from academia, consumer groups or unions.

Case studies on key issues such as banking regulation, hedge funds, credit rating agencies, accountancy rules and tax havens show how the financial sector has been actively involved in designing the policies which contributed to recent financial instability. The European Union is now consulting the same experts on its plans to tackle the crisis.

Paul de Clerck member of ALTER-EU’s steering committee, said: "The Commission only seems to be interested in listening to the advice of the finance industry, rather than acting in the interests of society. Light touch regulation may have made it easier to do business, but it has not protected our savings and our pensions from being gambled away. Now the Commission tells us they are tightening the rules but in reality their proposals still leave many loopholes. If the Commission wants to restore confidence in our financial systems, it must break free of this stranglehold of partial advice."

Watching the TARP oversight commission headed by Dr. Elizabeth Warren of Harvard struggling with participating member Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), why insistently sought to perpetuate right wing ideology that led to our present disaster, I have some reservations about the value of distributing the responsibility. However, their point is excellent.

The administration’s putting our economic sector back at work trying to bail the country out of the sinking ship they skewered does provoke endless criticism. While I do accept that familiarity with the perpetrators and the errors is helpful, complicity is a suspicion that gives us all pause.

Personally, I trust the present administration to bear up under critics and forge on with good prospects. I do recognize that we were rescued from the kind of disaster that we saw in Maryland during the S&L crises, when accounts were frozen and until the state remedied the situation with a cash inoculations. Some families I knew personally were kept from funds for their children’s college education. Some lost businesses, and the state wound up managing a pig farm on the Eastern Shore. (Yes, the temptation is great to say they still are in the presence of a certain former VP’s residence there, but there, I said it and I apologize to the innocent pigs of the world.)

We have the unfortunate struggle in this country to fight off the irresponsible right wing seeking to re-institute ideological values and practices, and effort to add to the causes of our present economic distress. On every front, from social stigmas from the past to the threats they wield against the internet, the right wing seems determined to destroy this country in order to prove the left can’t handle government, either.

ALTER-EU has sound ideas, and we need to look seriously at their proposal for this country as well. As the U.S. returns to functional relationships with the rest of the world, I see a great value to be gained from participation in thinking, sound consideration of alternatives to the way things got so badly damaged. A revocation of the policies of recidivism and refusal to learn from their mistakes could take serious bolstering from shared experience and expertise among all nations that includes this one as it rapidly regains ground.